Tomorrow, Thursday March 7th, is World Book Dayso I thought I’d share some ideas about doing book reviewswith your class. My pupils recently did book reviews on their blogs. The following are some guidelines I gave them for completing the exercise. You may find some tips that may be helpful for your pupils, whether they are doing the book review in a copy, on a sheet or online.
When writing a Book Review, here are some things to keep in mind. Write an interesting starting sentence for your review. Some people like to start with a question. Other reviewers like to start with the book facts: author, illustrator, and publisher to make it easy for others to find the book. Essentially, the book review should contain two main elements: [click to continue…]
This video will help pupils understand the meaning behind many of the most common prefixes in grammar: dis-, de-, inter-, un-, non-, etc. This video comes from the team at Flocabulary.
This engaging video will help pupils understand the five main elements of a story: plot, characters, conflict, theme, setting. These are essential for good writing.
Pangrams are sentences that contain all twenty-six letters of the alphabet at least once. A perfect pangram contains only twenty-six letters, which is quite difficult to achieve. Probably the best known pangram is the one used to illustrate type fonts: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”. This is a handout with eighteen examples of pangrams found on the ‘net. I use these for handwriting practice. [click to continue…]
Pupils need to be made aware that there are different elements that make up the structure of a story. Most or all of these elements need to be present in the story to give it structure. These are: Setting, Period, Theme, Plot, Point of View, Characters. This presentation explains to pupils what these components are and encourages them to use them. [click to continue…]
Setting the scene in a story gives the story a sense of realism – that it is happening in a real or imagined place. It means that the author must create “word pictures” so that the reader can visualise the setting in their mind. It is important to give pupils strategies to encourage them to [...]
The conclusion of a story is almost as important as the beginning. Some writers can rush the ending or not put enough thought into how to sensitively bring a story to a conclusion. The story ending can leave the reader with a variety of feelings depending on the type of ending chosen. This presentation gives [...]
The opening of a story is hugely important. Its job is to catch the attention of the reader and make him/her want to read on. If the opening is boring and unimaginative, the reader will switch off. Many younger pupils write “bed-to-bed” stories – where the story begins when they wake up in the morning [...]
Editing a piece of writing, whether it is imaginative writing or factual writing, is an integral part of the writing process. An author would seldom submit a piece of writing to a publisher without first having edited it. Some authors are known to edit their work many, many times. Teaching pupils how to edit their [...]
Authors’ Circles should be an integral part of the Writing Process. It entails dividing pupils into groups of between four and six. Each pupil shares a paragraph/page/chapter of their piece of writing by reading it aloud to the other members of the Circle. This gives the pupil their first “audience” for their piece of writing. [...]
This is a mock-up of a Facebook Page. While it could be used to get pupils to write about themselves, the creator says that he gets pupils to fill it in as whatever character they are portraying in a drama lesson – that’s a great idea! Source: Conor Bredin (.doc file 297KB) Download File
Tomorrow, Thursday March 7th, is World Book Day so I thought I’d share some ideas about doing book reviews with your class. My pupils recently did book reviews on their blogs. The following are some guidelines I gave them for completing the exercise. You may find some tips that may be helpful for your pupils, whether they are doing the book review in a copy, on a sheet or online.
