Reply To: Roald Dahl’s five books:The Twits etc
Summary for lesson 6:
What did we cover
– Discussed the homework tasks and what we did well on/could improve
– Reflected on last lesson
– Went over some facts about the book
– Came up with alternative titles for the booked
– Summarised the second half of the book
– Worked through the questions for the first half of Esio Trot
– Discussed whether the ending is happy and if we consider Mr Hoppy to be a ‘good
man’
Class report
It was lovely to continue our work on Esio Trot today. The homework that the students
produced after last lesson was wonderful, so I was very glad to be able to compliment them
all on their hard work at the start of the session.
We began by recapping what had happened so far in the book, and then went over some ‘fun
facts’ about Esio Trot. Following on from the fact that Esio Trot wasn’t the first choice for the
book’s title, we spend some time coming up with our own ideas for titles and explaining why
we would call the story that. Some of the ideas were really fun!
We then moved on to work through the rest of the VIPER questions. The students continued
to provide some really fabulous answers, and I was especially pleased to see how much they
engaged in our longer debates over certain questions (such as ‘how would Mrs Silver feel
about Alfie growing’, and ‘does Alfie have a happy life in the end’).
We spent the final section of the lesson discussing some important points, mainly whether we
thought Mr Hoppy was a ‘good man’ or not. The way the students discussed the morality of
lying was impressively sophisticated; they engaged with both sides of the argument, and
came to some very interesting conclusions. It was a wonderfully lively debate, and a really
fantastic way to finish off our work on this book.
I was glad to see how excited the students were when they heard that Matilda will be our next
book; it will be very interesting to see how they deal with this text, as it is quite a bit longer and
more complex than those that we have studied so far.
Home work for lesson 6:
Write the prequel to the story.
OR
Describe your favourite part of the story and why it was your favourite.
Teacher’s Reading task and VIPERS questions for lesson 7
