Teach Reading and Writing Issue 19

www.teachwire.net | 51 C L AS SROOM AC T I V I T I E S Loved this? Try these... v The Way of Dog by Zana Fraillon v Moon Bear by Gill Lewis v I, Cosmo by Carlie Sorosiak v Until The Road Ends by Phil Earle v The Boy Who Saved a Bear by Nizrana Farook Jon Biddle is an experienced primary school teacher and English lead. Winner of the 2018 Reading for Pleasure Experienced Teacher of the Year award, he coordinates the national Patron of Reading initiative. could easily lead to creating a class list of animal-related similes, metaphors, idioms and phrases that the pupils discover in books they are reading. The boy The boy is the objective of Pup’s quest to return home. Pup loves his boy. He misses his boy, and he understands that his boy loves and misses him in return. Interspersed between the main chapters, there are occasional short chapters written from the point of view of the boy. These work really well, partly because they help remind the reader about Pup’s ultimate goal and give the reader something to hope for, but also because they reinforce how strong the relationship is between Pup and his boy. At the end of the story, when Pup follows the Great Sky Wolf up into the sky and is reunited with his entire pack, there is an excellent opportunity to create one final chapter from the boy’s perspective, perhaps an account of their last great adventure together. piece of dialogue between Fang and Sally Bones, where they discussed their respective plans to take over the city. This might also be a handy way to ‘integrate dialogue in narratives to convey character and advance the action’, as mentioned in the KS2 teacher assessment framework. Figurative language featuring dogs We enjoyed exploring the meanings of several examples of figurative phrases and sentences which were based around dogs. There are lots to choose from: it’s a dog’s life, like a dog with two tails, barking up the wrong tree, dog eat dog (which originally comes from an old Latin proverb), better to be the head of a dog than the tail of a lion, let sleeping dogs lie, working like a dog and someone’s bark being worse than their bite are just a few. We thought about what they could mean and then tried to use them in conversation, often with very entertaining results. This Story comparison Several of my pupils were very keen to point out the similarities between A Street Dog Named Pup and another one of their favourites, The Outlaw Varjak Paw by SF Said. They really enjoyed comparing the antagonists (Pup and Varjak Paw), exploring the relationships between the secondary characters and debating whether Sally Bones’ gang would ally themselves with Fang’s pack if there were ever a crossover story. I wouldn’t suggest reading the books immediately following each other, but covering them at different times in Key Stage 2 would provide a fantastic opportunity for comparison. One of my class Reading Champions told me she was going to contact Gill Lewis and SF Said to ask them to write a crossover adventure, although I am not sure if she ever got around to it. However, she did create a wonderful legends and stories from holy books to console and comfort them during times of difficulty. The prologue also links well to any work being done around creation stories. SLOGANS The majority of my class were aware of the slogan ‘A dog is for life, not just for Christmas’, and enjoyed discussing what they thought it meant. We then looked at other animal welfare slogans such as ‘True beauty is cruelty-free’ and the RSPCA motto, ‘A world where all animals are respected and treated with kindness and compassion’. The pupils then planned, designed and produced slogans and posters of their own, which were intended to deliver a similarly powerful message. My personal favourite showed two photographs, one of a very cute puppy and one of the same breed of dog when grown to its full size. It had the caption ‘Do you really want it?’ under the photo of the puppy and then ‘Really?’ under the photo of the fully-grown dog. There were also a few that perhaps lacked some subtlety, including ‘A cat is until you die, unless they die first’. I guess it got the message across though! When exploring these campaigns, do operate with caution, taking extra care to ensure that children aren’t exposed to distressing or graphic content.

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