Teach-Primary-Issue-19.2

www.teachwire.net | 79 T E ACH RE AD I NG & WR I T I NG Loved this? Try these... v Sword of the Sun by Sinéad O’Hart v Wild by Ele Fountain v Bird Boy by Catherine Bruton v The Way to Impossible Island by Hilary McKay v Nettle by Bex Hogan the class’s favourite pages. Ask the children to read through carefully and underline lightly in pencil what they think are the most powerful or interesting words. They will then need to go back through and read the words they’ve selected. Are there any other words (conjunctions, pronouns, etc) that they need to include to make their poem more cohesive? Once the children are happy with their collection of words, they can use a black marker pen or crayon to back out all the other words on the page, leaving only the chosen words exposed for the reader to see. You can find an illustrated example at tinyurl.com/tp-Blackout WAXRESIST ART Pupils could practise their watercolour skills by creating watery wax resist pictures. Ensure a sheet of white paper is orientated in portrait. Using a white crayon or wax candle, the children need to cover the top two thirds of their pages with raindrops or water droplets. In the bottom third, draw a small circle (or group of small circles) with ripples spreading out from them. When the crayon work has been completed, the children will need to use watercolour paints to fill in the sky. Look at some images of rainy skies. What colours can the children see? Blues, greys, purples, black? Once the paint is applied, they’ll see the wax figures appear. INNOVATE There are several ways this text could be used to create some extended pieces of narrative or descriptive writing. The World Between the Rain is, in part, a portal adventure – Marina is transported to an alternative world when she slides between the raindrops. You could encourage the children to think about what other watery words Marina could have discovered and who may have lived there. Pupils could also write a different version of the story called The World Between the Snowflakes or The World Within the Rainbow . How could a character be transported there? What would it look like and who might they meet? Jo Cummins is an experienced primary school teacher and English leader with a passion for children’s books and mental health awareness. She currently works for a specialist educational provision in Hampshire in a teaching and advisory role librarygirlandbookboy.com @librarygirlandbookboy loss might take if it were a living thing? Ask pupils to draw a picture of what they imagine grief/ loss might look like. Label it with some key emotion words. Add some of the behaviours they might show. What strategies do the children have that could help ‘tame their beast’? Add these as well. Figurative language grab The author, Susan Cahill, uses lots of wonderful figurative language to beautifully capture the mood and appearances of characters and settings. Start by recapping on what figurative language is (similes, metaphors, personification). Can children think of any examples? Have three large sheets of paper or hoops to sort their ideas into. It may be useful to have some powerful examples ready on strips of paper to be sorted and stuck on to the paper. Give children extracts from the story (maybe a different page per table) and ask them to highlight examples of where Cahill has used figurative language. Write them out on sticky notes or strips of paper and add to the sorting sheets. Pages 84, 195, and 229 are all good starting points. When the children have finished sorting their finds, ask them to share which are their favourites. Why? Which words do they particularly like? What images do the phrases conjure up in their minds? The giant angler fish, which was created by Marina’s repressed emotions, is a particularly good Discussion questions: 1. Why is it important to share how we are feeling with people? 2. How did Marina behave when she was grieving (angry, shouting, bottling things up, crying)? 3. How did Marina ‘tame her beast’ (remembered stories about her father, screamed into the wind, spoke to her family)? Reference page 284. 4. What other things might help someone in a similar situation? What might help you? 5. What form do you imagine grief/ character to describe using figurative language. Show the children photos or a video of a real angler fish. Which features really stand out? What emotions was the angler fish in the story experiencing (emptiness, sadness, anger, loneliness)? What alternative phrases can children think of to replace the name ‘angler fish’ to make the figurative sentences they are going to write more interesting? For example: the beast , the sea monster , the vast creature . Give each pupil a picture of an angler fish to label, and add their sentences to. As an extension, they could use personification to describe the sea around the fish. TP