Chapter by chapter study guide
A lovely pack focusing on themes, characters and settings. Also contains a range of activites for further research and stimuli for written or spoken activities.
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Review this resource05/02/2020
This is the text to choose for a set full of boys who hate reading. A great plot and very real characters. If you don't know this text - get hold of a copy to try it out.
If you teach low ability sets where reading skills are a problem (you need a reading age of over 12 to cope with this text) - consider abandoning the reading and just read to them instead - without a book in front of them. I suspect that you will find - as I did - that their listening skills - and their memories are far better than you ever thought - and that they will be able to produce the written work required without close reference to the printed text.
I can assure you that they could do most of these worksheets from listening - and that they only needed to wade through the text (give them page numbers where reading is essential in your view)for a few of the questions.
This book has yet to be produced as an audible book. I find that buying an audible book - read by a professional actor is streets above me reading to them. I take real pleasure in the fact that from my past years of teaching I have produced some "really keen readers" who listen to stories rather than reading them themselves.
This pack contains everything that I could think of that might arise when studying this text. I certainly don't set my students the whole pack to complete - I pick and mix from the way the discussions go when we break off to talk about a point raised by the text. Whenever there is a quote cited - it's because it triggered a point from my groups. This text has led my groups into a great deal of unexpected exploration of topics like "A Just War" - what is bravery? - Military awards and the stories of people who have been awarded them - the best was when a group investigated the age of soldiers and were horrified to find that they were three years away from the call up age in the UK in WWII!
This book has led us to a number of other texts - song lyrics like Nineteen (Paul Hardcastle) - Brothers in Arms - lots of songs about war from Henry V onward - don't ignore the folk songs - more poetry from Virgil onwards - Dance of Death (Roger McGough) - try to get away from just the WWI poetry which appears so often and films - most popular Zulu, Waterloo and The Great Escape - I try to show films that are less likely to be on the recent lists - and introduce them to the fact that great films can be 50 years old!
We have also tried "living in WWII" at lunchtime. I provided Spam, beetroot or Marmalade sandwiches (1 round available) made with margarine (the cheapest you can find) with a and a cake with no sugar and a carrot tart for pudding - small portions and doorstop slices of bread. To drink water, camp coffee or tea with sterilised milk and no sugar. (This was an actual meal offered to my parents when travelling on British Rail - or whatever it was then.) This, plus my old ration book was a real eye opener. They were pleased to be living in the 21st century and not required to eat like this for every meal!
If you teach low ability sets where reading skills are a problem (you need a reading age of over 12 to cope with this text) - consider abandoning the reading and just read to them instead - without a book in front of them. I suspect that you will find - as I did - that their listening skills - and their memories are far better than you ever thought - and that they will be able to produce the written work required without close reference to the printed text.
I can assure you that they could do most of these worksheets from listening - and that they only needed to wade through the text (give them page numbers where reading is essential in your view)for a few of the questions.
This book has yet to be produced as an audible book. I find that buying an audible book - read by a professional actor is streets above me reading to them. I take real pleasure in the fact that from my past years of teaching I have produced some "really keen readers" who listen to stories rather than reading them themselves.
This pack contains everything that I could think of that might arise when studying this text. I certainly don't set my students the whole pack to complete - I pick and mix from the way the discussions go when we break off to talk about a point raised by the text. Whenever there is a quote cited - it's because it triggered a point from my groups. This text has led my groups into a great deal of unexpected exploration of topics like "A Just War" - what is bravery? - Military awards and the stories of people who have been awarded them - the best was when a group investigated the age of soldiers and were horrified to find that they were three years away from the call up age in the UK in WWII!
This book has led us to a number of other texts - song lyrics like Nineteen (Paul Hardcastle) - Brothers in Arms - lots of songs about war from Henry V onward - don't ignore the folk songs - more poetry from Virgil onwards - Dance of Death (Roger McGough) - try to get away from just the WWI poetry which appears so often and films - most popular Zulu, Waterloo and The Great Escape - I try to show films that are less likely to be on the recent lists - and introduce them to the fact that great films can be 50 years old!
We have also tried "living in WWII" at lunchtime. I provided Spam, beetroot or Marmalade sandwiches (1 round available) made with margarine (the cheapest you can find) with a and a cake with no sugar and a carrot tart for pudding - small portions and doorstop slices of bread. To drink water, camp coffee or tea with sterilised milk and no sugar. (This was an actual meal offered to my parents when travelling on British Rail - or whatever it was then.) This, plus my old ration book was a real eye opener. They were pleased to be living in the 21st century and not required to eat like this for every meal!
18/07/2013
