Biographical Writing
Teacher Resources
Teacher Resources
A Fortunate Man – using photographs as inspiration
Recently, St Briavels Primary School worked with Reading the Forest to help mark the 50th anniversary of the book A Fortunate Man by John Berger and Jean Mohr.
The book documents the life and work of a village doctor and is a collaboration between writer Berger and the photographer, Jean Mohr. The book became a definitive guide for the role of a country GP and the relationships between a doctor and the community they serve.
The school used images from the book of village people as inspiration for writing about St Briavels community members today. A list of people and roles was drawn up, including family members who had lived in the village for many years, as well as people who had recently moved to the area.
Pupils then interviewed people both in school time but also as a homework activity. The interviews focused on questions such as:
‘What makes you happy about living in St Briavels?’
‘What changes have you seen since you moved here?’
‘How are you involved in the community life of St Briavels?’
The interviews were then written up as short biographies and displayed in the local community centre alongside photographs of the community from the A Fortunate Man book.
The book documents the life and work of a village doctor and is a collaboration between writer Berger and the photographer, Jean Mohr. The book became a definitive guide for the role of a country GP and the relationships between a doctor and the community they serve.
The school used images from the book of village people as inspiration for writing about St Briavels community members today. A list of people and roles was drawn up, including family members who had lived in the village for many years, as well as people who had recently moved to the area.
Pupils then interviewed people both in school time but also as a homework activity. The interviews focused on questions such as:
‘What makes you happy about living in St Briavels?’
‘What changes have you seen since you moved here?’
‘How are you involved in the community life of St Briavels?’
The interviews were then written up as short biographies and displayed in the local community centre alongside photographs of the community from the A Fortunate Man book.
Using Photographs in Your Classroom
Photographs are a fantastic way to inspire pupils! The A Fortunate Man biography activity could easily be adapted for your school by simply using images from your area. The Reading the Forest website includes a list of local books, many of which include photographs, as does the website Sungreen. Families often have collections of old photographs of the area or you could put a call for help out to members of the local community.
This photograph of a horse working underground at Lightmoor Pit,
https://www.sungreen.co.uk/Cinderford/Lightmoor-Pit-Pony.htm
would link with local history/mining topics but would also be an excellent starting point for creating characters for story writing, ideas for descriptive writing and poetry.
Images can also be used to help teach and develop reading inference skills.
The young girl in this photograph,
https://www.sungreen.co.uk/Clearwell/girl-with-animals.html
is walking her dog while being surrounded by various other animals. Possible questions to practise inference skills could include:
This photograph could also be the start of a story writing unit where the image is used to create a central character and a storyline based around a farm and its animals.
This photograph of a horse working underground at Lightmoor Pit,
https://www.sungreen.co.uk/Cinderford/Lightmoor-Pit-Pony.htm
would link with local history/mining topics but would also be an excellent starting point for creating characters for story writing, ideas for descriptive writing and poetry.
Images can also be used to help teach and develop reading inference skills.
The young girl in this photograph,
https://www.sungreen.co.uk/Clearwell/girl-with-animals.html
is walking her dog while being surrounded by various other animals. Possible questions to practise inference skills could include:
- How is the girl feeling? How do you know?
- Why is she feeling that way?
- Where do you think this is?
- When is this? (What time of year/day?)
- How old do you think the girl is?
This photograph could also be the start of a story writing unit where the image is used to create a central character and a storyline based around a farm and its animals.
Resources shared here are for educational purposes, and all copyright remains with the authors. Gloucestershire County Libraries in the Forest of Dean are an excellent source of local books for loan. Please contact us if you would like help to find more local resources on this topic to support your teaching.
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