Explanation:
LEVEL 1
I looked out the window. The sky was tar-black and the large clouds were moving towards me. I heard a tapping on the window and then it became a pitter-patter. People ran for cover outside and umbrellas were opened as the clouds spat out their beads of water. Puddles began plinking as the rainfall became heavier. The roofs of the cars danced with spray and I could hear the murmuring of the rain through the window. It sounded like the buzzing of angry bees.
For a Level 2 assignment, more detail should be added. Imagine the effect of the rain on the trees and include more detail on the sky and clouds. At the end of the paragraph, try to write something about the sun coming out. This will vary your writing style.
LEVEL 2
I quickened my pace as the clouds began to gather in the sky. Up to now, the sky had been postcard-perfect, but it was changing. The beautiful cocktail-blue shade was beginning to darken into gravel-grey. Large pillows of cloud were forming, blotting out the old-gold colour of the sun.
I got the first splatter of rain when I was halfway across the meadow. I took shelter under an old oak, hoping that I could see out the shower. Droplets of moisture began to drip from the leaves. They were sprinkling onto the grass like a gardener’s hose. Then the rainfall became more intense. A wall of rain moved over the oak and the drops were drumming against the canopy. So much rain was falling that the sound blurred into one long, whirring noise. It reminded me of the rotor blades on a helicopter. Eventually, the noise lessened and the drops faded into a musical chime.
The sun came out again, casting slanted beams of light across the meadow. Steam rose slowly from the grass. It rose up eerily and drifted mist-like towards the molten-gold sun. The image was so vivid that it stayed with me all the way home.
Level 3 should conjure up a scene where the rain’s effect can be explored in more detail. The words should get more complex also. An idea might be to visualise a forest scene in autumn, for example. Transport yourself there and describe the colours, the sensations and the sounds of the rain.
LEVEL 3
It began as a whispering in the air. The day had been beautiful and the sky was like a dome of plasma-blue. The clouds had looked like airy anvils drifting under the gleaming disc of sun.
We had put our tent up just before the Reaper’s moon of autumn appeared over the trees. The moon seemed to turn the leaves into a flaming patchwork of colours: scorching-yellows, lava-reds and burnished-browns. It added an alien glamour to a perfect scene. We heard a greedy thrush, snail a-tapping on rock; he finished his supper before fluttering into the owl-light of the forest. The mournful cry of a lonely fox echoed through the vault-still silence of the trees.
A huffing wind rose up then, stirring the flaps of our tent. A tinkling sound came to our ears as the first pearls of rain dropped onto the leaves. The sound was like the glassy clinking of a champagne flute, lilting and clear. A sheet of rain passed over us and the sound intensified. The noise on the tent was like the phut-phut-phut that ripened nuts make when they hit the ground. It wasn’t the soft, sodden, swollen drops of spring we were hearing; it was like ball-bearings were hitting the canvas roof with force. We could also hear an occasional ker-plunking sound. It was caused by the rainwater gathered on the tent falling to the ground in a great swash of release.
The thermometer plunged as we huddled together and shivered in the tent. For a brief moment, we thought that we might be doomed adventurers, destined to get swept away in a mighty flood. We needn’t have worried. The curtain of rain passed over by the time dawn arrived. An explosion of birdsong erupted from the dripping trees and it was if the rain had never been.
A Level 4 assignment might involve a degree of philosophy. You can discuss how the rain is both life giving and life threatening. The metaphors should be more creative and the turn of phrase made more enriching.
LEVEL 4
‘The sun enables life. The rain grants it safe passage’.
The winter sky is a widow’s sky, bedarkened and weeping. The clouds are churlish and kraken-cruel. They cough out great gouts of water and thunking balloons of sopping moisture. It teems down in a biblical deluge, flooding the rivers, drowning the fields and overflowing the dams. It is a Noah’s-Ark cataclysm of rain, an unending cataract of water sluicing from the sky. Trees are uprooted, cars go bobbing by and entire villages disappear under a frothy lather of suds. Cities are overwhelmed and electricity blackouts have people living in fear of the unknown. The rain is incessant. It snaps and crackles like bracken pods in a bush fire. The flood-gates in the sky have been opened and no-one is there to close them back up, it seems.
