I used to love reading novels with 5th and 6th class. You can get so much out of one novel and the opportunities for linkage and integration are endless. In this post I will include some generic teaching ideas you can use with any novel to get you started. This is all what I would call copy work. Worksheets are handy but I like having everything in the copies especially in the senior room.
Chapter One:
- Identify and describe the characters we have been introduced to in chapter one.
- Punctuation Party: Search for points of punctuation in chapter one.
- Character Analysis: Make a character map. Identify the main and the background characters. Predict the roles they will play as the novel progresses.
- Infer the way the characters feel by choosing quotes from the chapter.
- Hold peer conferences about where the story will go from chapter one. Record all predictions.
- write the opening paragraph for chapter two.
- Record chapter one pictorially.
- Focus the lesson on a small topic such as adjectives, e.g. replace the word ‘good’ with another adjective wherever you see it.
- Search for verbs in the chapter, strong verbs, passive verbs and so on.
- Remember to pre teach the new vocabulary the children will meet in each chapter. Add these new words to the class word wall and give them for homework to create sentences with.