Literacy Activities for Classic and Contemporary Texts 7-14
The Whoosh Book
- 160 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Literacy Activities for Classic and Contemporary Texts 7-14
The Whoosh Book
About This Book
English teachers are always keen to explore new ways of motivating their pupils to engage with reading, both for learning and for pleasure. Literacy Activities for Classic and Contemporary Texts 7-14 is a practical, friendly book which uses the 'whoosh' to cover some of our best known classic and contemporary texts and offers a thoroughly enjoyable way for pupils to become part of the story, rather than just passive recipients of it. As an innovative and active learning strategy, the whoosh technique allows all students, regardless of gender, age, ability, learning need or command of language, to partake on an equal footing.
For younger pupils, the activities in this book provide an ideal way to internalise structure and key elements in story telling through physical response. For older students, they provide an enjoyable way to engage with challenging texts as well as facilitating the analysis of themes, issues, characterisation and setting. Students themselves become the story as its characters, sounds and even objects – once they are familiar with whooshing, many students will want to write and produce a whoosh of their own.
Classic authors and texts covered by this book include: -
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- Aesop's fables, Greek myths and legends;
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- Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Oscar Wilde;
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- Shakespeare (The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream);
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- Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mary Shelley;
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- Andrew Norriss, Frank Cottrell Boyce, Nina Bawden, Michelle Magorian and much more...
You can use a whoosh to introduce a new text, to examine conflict, dilemma, plot, setting or characterisation, whoosh a controversial section of text to provoke discussion, or overcome reluctance to engage with archaic language by whooshing key sections of a story. Discussion starters, lesson objectives and follow-up activities are included throughout the text alongside the whooshes, and scripts enabling pupils to deliver dialogue are provided on the book's eResource.
This book is an invaluable resource, providing whooshes across a wide range of genres to meet the learning needs of children from 7 to 14, for both practising primary and lower secondary teachers.
Frequently asked questions
Information
1 Legends, myths and fables
1 Aesop's fables: The Lion and the Mouse
Objective
- to consider story structure.
Characters | Objects | Sounds |
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Lion Mouse hunters other animals | sky sun rays from the sun grasses rope tree | swishing breathing roaring shouting |
Follow-up activities
- If you are introducing the concept of story structure for the first time, draw a simple story frame with three consecutive sections labelled beginning, middle and end and explain the terms. Through shared discussion, recall together the key facts of the story, recording contributions in the correct box in word or picture form to show the sequence of events. A template is provided as Resource 1.
- If pupils have prior knowledge of story structure, use shared discussion to define the beginning, middle and end of the story, noting the content in each section. Paired discussion can be useful to assist recall of key facts. You could also use story tennis: a pair of pupils alternate to recall one fact from the story, expressing it in a single sentence.
- Provide confident or able pupils with a blank sheet of paper and challenge them to devise a three-section story plan with the key facts of each section of the story written or drawn in sequence.
- Using the outcome of these discussions, model the planning of a new fable in picture or word form. Discuss what needs to be created (characters, a plot and a meaning) and brainstorm ideas. Then ask pupils to do the same, individually, in pairs or in groups. Pupils could use Resource 1 as the planning format, recording their story plan and key vocabulary.
- If appropriate to age and ability, model the writing of a fable before asking pupils to write their own fable, either in words or pictures.
2 The Panchatantra: The Blue Jackal
Objective
- to analyse how the sequencing of a story creates coherence
- to develop an awareness of text cohesion through the use of paragraphs.
Characters | Objects | Sounds |
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Blue Jackal dogs monkeys lions tigers wolves Lion King jackals | desert village houses dye pot forest tree stump food forest entrance | barking splash forest howling |
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- Contents
- List of resources
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Legends, myths and fables
- 2 Seven short stories
- 3 Plays
- 4 Classic novels
- 5 Modern novels
- 6 How to write a Whoosh
- Bibliography
- Indexes