Class Novel

The Sleeping Baobab TreeThe Sleeping Baobab Tree by Paula Leyden, like its predecessor The Butterfly Heart, is set in Zambia. One morning twelve-year-old Fred wakes up with an unaccountable sense of foreboding, which his friend Bul-Boo, one of the twins from next door, insists is just his imagination. However, the feeling persists – and grows stronger when Fred’s scary and extremely eccentric great-granny, Nokokulu, asks him to accompany her on a trip to an ancient burial site called Ng’ombe Ilede, a place described by their teacher, Sister Leonisa, as the Place of Death. [click to continue…]

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Wildflower Girl Table Quiz

by admin on 14/04/2013

Wildflower Girl Table QuizTable Quiz based on the book “Wildflower Girl” by Marita Conlon Mc Kenna. It consists of 127 Powerpoint slides with all of the questions based on the book. There are eight rounds with six questions in each round. All of the answers, along with a Tie-Break round are provided. Hopefully, there is a mixture of easy enough questions and some to challenge the memory of the pupils. The aim really is that pupils should be able to get a good few correct with the harder ones there to sort out winners. [click to continue…]

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The Iron Man Workpack

by admin on 28/02/2013

The Iron ManThis workpack for the novel “The Iron Man”, breaks the book into eighteen day’s work. There is an after-reading activity, homework activity and suggested vocabulary for each day. Key comprehension strategies are utilised to assess understanding of the reading. There is also a list of possible questions after each chapter. [click to continue…]

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Classroom Novels

by admin on 29/01/2013

novelsThanks to South Dublin County Council Libraries (SDCC) for providing me with this resource. It consists of a list of novels suitable for literacy work in primary classrooms. SDCC has thirty copies of each of these novels available to loan to schools in their area for a three month period. This is a great service to schools in this area. However, even if your school is not located in this area, the list is still a great guideline for schools who are considering investing in sets of class novels and wondering what is suitable for different classes. [click to continue…]

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We really enjoyed this futuristic and funny book.

It’s probably more suitable for boys than girls and those with an interest in space and science-fiction.

The action is fast-paced and the illustrations really add to this.

The plot is forever twisting but there’s lots of humour in them too.

We loved all the different creatures and planets. [click to continue…]

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Bill’s New Frock

December 12, 2012

This resource provides a chapter by chapter list of questions for the Anne Fine novel “Bill’s New Frock”. The novel tells the story of Bill Simpson who wakes up one morning to find that he’s a girl, and worse still, his mother makes him wear a frilly pink dress to school. How on earth is he [...]

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Book Review: Secrets and Shadows

October 2, 2012

Secrets and Shadows by Brian Gallagher is set during World War Two. Barry Malone is a twelve year old boy from Liverpool, sent to Dublin by his mother after the Luftwaffe air-raid in 1941. There he meets Grace Ryan – an outgoing adventurous Dublin girl forced to move in with relatives on Arbour Hill after [...]

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Book Review: The Demon Notebook

September 30, 2012

“The Demon Notebook”, published by O’ Brien Press, is the first book written by author Erika McGann. The book is about five girls who want to be witches. They try to cast spells but they never work until one day, after using a Ouija board, one of the girls becomes possessed by a demon. Suddenly [...]

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Mark Spark in the Dark

September 27, 2012

This resource provides a chapter by chapter list of questions for the Jacqueline Wilson novel “Mark Spark in the Dark”, a novel about a boy who is scared of the dark, but when he thinks his Great Gran is in trouble, nothing is going to stop him coming to her rescue. These could be done orally, [...]

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Rugby Spirit

June 6, 2012

Rugby Spirit is a book about a young boy, Eoin, who is going boarding to Castlerock College, and what he doesn’t know is that his grandad, Dixie Madden, is an absolute legend there. When he arrives, he has already made friends such as Alan and Rory who start to show him around the school, and [...]

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Kensuke’s Kingdom

June 4, 2012

This resource provides a chapter by chapter list of questions for the Michael Morpurgo novel “Kensuke’s Kingdom”, a novel about a boy washed overboard onto a desert island. These could be done orally, they could be used as comprehension questions or they could be used as a quiz at the end of reading the novel. A [...]

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The Cave of Secrets

June 4, 2012

The Cave of Secrets by Morgan Llewellyn is a story about Tom Flynn, the rejected son of an indebted land owner. One day, running from his father’s temper, he stumbles across a cave in Roaring Water Bay and there he meets Donal, who is different to Tom in every way. While Tom has been raised [...]

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The Butterfly Heart

April 25, 2012

The Butterfly Heart by Paula Leyden is a tale set in Zambia and is told through the voices of a young girl and an old man who has a way with snakes. The story contains folk tales and legends from Zambia, humour and sadness, old meeting new. It touches on, among other things, the issue of [...]

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The Táin

April 6, 2012

The story of The Táin (cattle raid) is well known, but this new version of the tale makes the story accessible to younger readers. Re-told by Celtic scholar Liam Mac Uistin, the story is revealed to the reader in easily-understood language that brings the famous tale to life. The story is told at a cracking [...]

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War Horse Questions

March 6, 2012

This resource provides a chapter by chapter list of questions for the Michael Morpurgo novel “War Horse”. These could be done orally, they could be used as comprehension questions or they could be used as a quiz at the end of reading the novel. A wordsearch based on the novel is also included. The novel [...]

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