Before breakfast

Text: an original contemporary reportage-style practice extract.

At half past six, the school kitchen seemed larger than it did at lunchtime. Steel counters shone beneath the white lights, trays waited in careful towers and the serving hatch was a dark square in the wall. There were no pupils asking for toast, no plates clattering and no smell of warm bread. Only the clock made a sound, tapping away the seconds.

The cook arrived and the room began to wake up. Oven doors thudded. Water hissed into deep sinks. Spoons clinked against metal bowls. She measured oats, sliced fruit and arranged cups in rows, moving from one task to the next without hesitation. When she lifted the first pan, a warm cloud rose towards the ceiling and carried a sweet, yeasty smell through the room.

By ten past eight, the hatch was open. Pupils arrived in bursts, bringing wet coats and unfinished conversations. The cook slid bowls across the counter, and one boy wrapped both hands around his breakfast. “That’s better,” he said, as steam covered his glasses. The kitchen no longer seemed unusually large. It was simply busy.

Analyse the ways in which the writer uses language and structure to make this account engaging.

In your response, you could consider:

• how the kitchen is presented at the beginning
• how words and sentence lengths create a sense of activity
• how the focus changes when the pupils arrive
• the effects created for the reader.

Support your ideas with detailed references to the text.