COVID-19 Creative Writing - Activity Instructions

Learning intentions:

Students will...

You will understand the key components of narrative writing by completing a range of planning activities on character, setting and narrative structure
You will write a narrative story based on stimulus material from the article and on the issue of COVID-19 in India.

Success criteria:

Students can...

You can develop well rounded characters for your narrative
You can develop an atmospheric setting for your narrative
You can develop an exciting narrative structure
You can use all of your planning to write a final narrative piece based on information from the article and on the issue of COVID-19 in India.

Read The Conversation Article below:

India and coronavirus: lack of access to handwashing facilities among poor makes fight even harder

Christophe Z Guilmoto, Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD) and Thomas Licart, Université de Strasbourg

Students wearing facemasks wash their hands before attending a class at a government-run school in Secunderabad, March 4, 2020. NOAH SEELAM / AFP

India introduced a national lockdown on March 24 hoping to curb the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. As April 2020 begins, the country has registered over 1,500 cases of COVID-19, the disease associated with the new coronavirus, according to the latest data available.

These numbers translate into surprisingly low prevalence rates compared to the rest of the world due to the delayed arrival of the virus. But it is possible the scenario could get much worse, while experts are warning that India is at grave risk notably due of the vulnerability of its health system.

Personal hygiene and more specifically handwashing practices have come under scrutiny as millions of India’s poorest do not have access to basic amenities. We are social demographers and have specifically investigated the data about handwashing practices in India for this article.

In India, research has shown how good hand hygiene reduces the risk of diarrhoea, pneumonia, or stunting – prime factors of high infant and child mortality.

Read more: Coronavirus: what might more hand washing mean in countries with water shortages?

Unfortunately the focus on handwashing was not included in the large Swachh Bharat Mission, or Clean India programme, launched in 2014. The spread of the coronavirus has brought back this issue to the fore as hand hygiene is one of the easiest ways to avoid both catching and spreading the virus.

While the Swachh Bharat mission addressed the issue of open defecation, it did not specifically focus on handwashing practices. Mumbai, October 2, 2017. Indranil Mukerjee/AFP

Hand hygiene in India

There is a debate about the reliability of surveys on handwashing and how statistics are captured. According to a national survey in 2011-12, 63% of households reported usually washing their hands with soap after defecation, a low figure for a country where toilet paper is rarely used.

More recent research conducted in India has, however, shown that the most reliable statistics about hygiene practices are derived from an environmental check in which fieldworkers inspect the house for the presence of a water source with soap where people wash their hands.

This is how information was collated in India’s last national demographic survey coordinated by the International Institute for Population Sciences in 2015-16, from where the data for this study was drawn. It found that 39.8% of households had no soap or no water, a situation often explained by the absence of soap during the survey.

Huge geographical variations

India’s proportion of households without soap or water is lower than the 71.4% of people in Bangladesh or 52.9% in Nepal lacking such amenities. But Indian households fared worse than Pakistan (31.4%) or Myanmar (16.4%) during the same period.

When the data is broken down, we found that 20% of households in urban areas, where access to running water is more common, had no handwashing facilities, compared to 51% in rural areas. Regional disparities are even wider: ranging from below 10% in Delhi to above 60% in the entire state of Odisha. As the map below shows, the best hand hygiene can be found in Northwest India, in coastal Western India, as well as in many states of the Northeast. In contrast, districts where handwashing facilities are the least common are clustered around Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and Jharkhand.

Regional disparities in handwashing practices in India. C.Z. Guilmoto, T. Licart, Author provided

The map also highlights another pocket of poor hand hygiene in the more developed Tamil Nadu state in southern India. In fact, while spatial patterns of hygiene are very pronounced, the map of lower use of soap and water does not exactly correspond to the least developed regions of India.

Socioeconomic inequalities

Our research also looked at social and economic characteristics of households. We found that only 4% of the richest households didn’t have handwashing facilities, compared to 80% of the poorest households. The worst levels of hand hygiene were observed in houses with an absence of toilet facilities (64%) or in illiterate families (68%).

Hand hygiene compare with social and economic characteristics of the families surveyed. C.Z. Guilmoto, T. Licart, Author provided

The implications of these inequalities may be considerable for the transmission of the disease within the country and the impact on vulnerable groups.

Labourers, maids, cooks, drivers, daily wagers, people working in small businesses in towns and cities are now losing their livelihoods. With no economic plans to support them, they are going back home generating the largest sudden migration India has seen since Partition in 1947.

Voices from the margins (https://youtu.be/Pn-giC1Qk5M)

A reverse migration is taking place in India.

Very soon they may carry COVID-19 back to their neighbourhoods and native villages and transmit the virus further across the country. The situation is particularly worrying in households composed only of old people above 65 years, with less than half of them having access to soap and water.

The benefits of handwashing in India extend well beyond the coronavirus since it reduces the spread of pathogens of all types. In 2017, researchers estimated the annual net costs to India from not handwashing were US$23 billion, stressing the considerable gains relating to decreases in diarrhoea and acute respiratory infection for India from behavioural changes. Local initiatives have already emerged to encourage the population to wash hands frequently.

Coronavirus: Indian Police perform handwashing dance (https://youtu.be/lKRZTetftPc)

Promotion of handwashing in India.

Experts also point out that although handwashing should be more widespread, lack of access to water – particularly clean water – in India may be another challenge for the poorest communities to protect themselves from coronavirus.

In this context, handwashing campaigns during the crisis will be crucial for public health in India – alongside an increase in access to basic amenities for all.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Part A: Find tThe Answers

Step 1.

Read the article and answer the following questions.

1. When did India’s COVID-19 lockdown begin?

2. How many cases of COVID-19 had India registered when April began?

3. Why do experts think India is ‘at grave risk’?

4. What are ‘basic amenities’?

5. What diseases does ‘good hand hygiene’ reduce the risk of?

6. Where can the best hand hygiene be found?

7. Where is the worst hand hygiene found?

8. The article states that the worst levels of hand hygiene occurred in homes with an absence of toilet facilities or in illiterate families. Why do you think this is?

9. A lack of access to water, specifically clean water, in poorer communities will also be a reason for the spread of COVID-19 in India. Describe how you would feel if you were one of the people living in these conditions.

Step 2.

In the article there are three separate pictures of daily life in India.

Picture 1 is of students washing their hands. Picture 2 is of a woman on a beach. Picture 3 is of a woman filling a bucket with water.

For each of these pictures, complete the Y charts below.

Now answer the following questions for each picture. Your answers do not need to be entirely factual or accurate; the purpose of this activity is to use the information from the article and your imagination to fill in any missing information.

The more descriptive you can be the better your writing will be later on.

Part B: Putting It All Together

You will now be completing a series of activities to plan your narrative. Planning is the most important step in any writing as it helps you to develop your ideas.

Choose ONE of the pictures from the activities above. Your planning and your final narrative will be based on this picture so make sure you choose carefully.

Step 1.

Character development

Types of characters

Protagonist – The leading character or one of the major characters often an advocate or champion of a particular cause or idea.

Antagonist – A character who actively opposes or is hostile towards someone (often the protagonist).

What will your characters look like?

What physical detail (clothing, appearance, body language, facial expression) could you add to your character to express the following emotions/conditions?

One has been completed to help you.

Step 2.

Setting development

Use the information from the Y chart for your chosen picture that you completed earlier to complete the table below. This will help you to develop your setting further.

Main location City, town or suburb – you should use one of the towns mentioned in the article. Sum it up in a few brief sentences.
The wider geography What does the landscape look like beyond the town, city or suburb?
Key locations in your narrative Choose two or three main locations where most of your action will take place. For example – in the house, at school.
Natural worlds You should include some information about the natural world in your story to create atmosphere. This can include information about the weather or animal life. For example – "Waking up to the sound of torrential rain drumming on the window…"

Step 3.

Narrative development

What is going to happen in your story?

Usually your protagonist will be working towards the achievement of a goal which will form the basis of your narrative.

Your characters goal should be related to the problem of COVID-19 in India.

To develop your narrative, complete the narrative structure below. You can also download the Word doc version here.

Step 4.

Time to write!

Now it is time to use all of your planning to write your narrative. We are aiming for a short narrative so you should aim to keep this within a word limit of 1000-1500 words.

Start A Conversation

Connect and collaborate with classmates.

Send your narrative to a classmate. Have them read it and provide feedback about how interesting it is. Can they suggest ways you can make it more interesting?
Do you know someone who lives in another country? Contact them and compare how COVID-19 has impacted them with how it has impacted you.

Taking it Further

Using materials you can find in your house and in your garden, create a picture of one of your characters or a setting from your story. For example, you might like to collect some leaves and twigs from your garden that you can paste onto some cardboard to create one of the locations from your story.

COVID-19 Creative Writing - English - Year 7 & 8

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