D is for Dahl

By Chelsea Klaassen

One of my favourite children’s authors is Roald Dahl because of his absurd and creative stories about brave and extraordinary children. When I was an English teaching assistant in a Dutch primary school I created a lesson series about Roald Dahl, which I would like to share with you. This lesson series is great for an EFL (English as a Foreign Language) class, but can also be used in any class.

What you will need:

• D is for Dahl workbook  
• A computer, a projector and access to YouTube
• Pens, pencils and colouring pencils
• Space to perform
  

Lesson 1

The aim of Lesson 1 is to introduce Roald Dahl the author. This is especially important when the children you are teaching are not British, because they might not know that much about Dahl and his work.

For Activity A, I have made a PowerPoint about Roald Dahl’s life. You can find a lot of information about the man online. You can use my questions or make up your own. The answers for my questions are: F(alse), F, F, T(rue), F, T, T, T, F, F, T, T, T, F, F.
 
Activity B, C and E can easily be done by the children without a lot of help. You can allow them to work in pairs if you like.

For activity D you can use a YouTube video in which the poem is read out loud:

Lesson 2

The aim of the second lesson is to learn more about the characters and to learn about adjectives.

Activity C can be done without any extra help. Exercise B is an exercise about adjectives and in my workbook I have used Dutch adjectives because I was teaching Dutch children. You can change this into an exercise in the language of your choice or maybe and exercise about synonyms.

For activity A you need two descriptions of characters. You can write these yourself or you can use mine:

The Witches

A witch is always a woman. When you meet a witch she is always wearing gloves.  A witch doesn’t have finger-nails. She has got claws instead. They also don’t have toes. 
Another weird thing about them is that they don’t have hair. She is as bald as a boiled egg.  
Also, a witch has very big nose-holes. And I am not ready yet. A witch also has eyes that change colour and her spit is blue. Scary, isn’t it?

BFG

The BFG, also known as the big friendly giant is very big. He is much bigger than a normal person. He is wearing a long coat and holding a suitcase and a trumpet. His face looks funny and wrinkly. His nose is as sharp as a knife and his ears are very big. His eyes are also big but they look friendly. The BFG is not mean.

Lesson 3

For the first activity you can use this YouTube video of the Oompa Loompa song: 

For the second part of lesson 3 you will need this video in which the poem 'Little Red Riding Hood' is read out loud:

Important: In order not to give away the ending (which is important for the rest of the lesson series!) you need to stop the video at 2.33 minutes.

Lesson 4 and 5

For these two lessons you just need the poem up to ‘I am going to eat you anyway’, which can be found in the workbook.

The children will use lesson 4 to learn the sentences and to practice their individual endings. Each child (there are groups of three) will be one of the characters from the poem. Make sure to tell them that all of them need to be and say something in the play.

The first 10-15 minutes of lesson 5 (depending on how many groups you have) can be the final practice time before the rest of the lesson is used to perform the play. If you really want to make something special out of it you can encourage the children to bring or make their own costumes and props.

Download Chelsea's 'D is for Dahl' Workbook here

I hope you will have fun teaching about Roald Dahl and his wonderful worlds!

After her teacher training Chelsea Klaassen studied Children's Literature at Reading University to learn more about the wonderful worlds of children's books. After her degree she decided to start a blog on which she posts creative reading and writing ideas and exercises for teachers, parents and carers to use. You can find her blog here. Follow Chelsea on Twitter at @Chelseamorag1.

The MCBF2015 team are looking for your blogs, stories, book reviews, photos, poems - simply anything and everything to do with your favourite children’s books! Email mcbf@mmu.ac.uk to get involved.

Happy Anniversary Alice in Wonderland!

By Chelsea Klaasen

This year the literary world celebrates the 150th anniversary of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

The story, or at least a version of it, was once told to three little girls on a boating trip. After that Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll was his pseudonym) planned to expand and publish it. One of the first manuscripts was given to one of the girls (Alice Liddell) as a Christmas gift. For this little book, Carroll made his own illustrations and he called it Alice’s adventures underground. Later versions of the book have been illustrated by John Tenniel, he made the images we all know and love. The title of the book also changed slightly and now we know this story mainly as Alice in Wonderland.

Nowadays, many different publications of this book exist as well as films, musicals and plays. I have decided to celebrate this loved children’s book myself and that is why I made an Alice in Wonderland workbook for you to use in the classroom. It can be used as a whole, but you can also pick the activities that suit your age group best. Of course, I also encourage you to add your own activities.

For some of the exercises it is important that the children have read the story. For others they can use their knowledge of the book or films and for some they can just use their creativity.

I hope you like this workbook and please let me know what you think of it or how it went down with the children you teach.

I have not included the answers to any of the activities because I am sure most of you can figure it out. If you would like some help, or you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to leave a message.

Download Chelsea's Alice in Wonderland Workbook here

Enjoy!


After her teacher training Chelsea Klaassen studied Children's Literature at Reading University to learn more about the wonderful worlds of children's books. After her degree she decided to start a blog on which she posts creative reading and writing ideas and exercises for teachers, parents and carers to use. You can find her blog here. Follow Chelsea on Twitter at @Chelseamorag1.

The MCBF2015 team are looking for your blogs, stories, book reviews, photos, poems - simply anything and everything to do with your favourite children’s books! Email mcbf@mmu.ac.uk to get involved.

How Stories Are 'Supposed' To Go

Miss Prince by Alicia L. Wright

By Alicia Wright

Miss Prince, my latest book wasn't supposed to be about vampires. And it isn't, really. But with all the arguing about how vampires are supposed to act in recent years, I got to thinking about it.

Who decides how stories go? You may argue that it is the writer, but is it really? Anyone and everyone can influence a story. It happens in real life all the time. People worry if they will get into trouble or if bad things will be said about them if they don't do what others expect.

In the Otherworlds, it's not much different. Things go according to how stories say they should. You might think you'd be lucky to be born a princess, yet it seems there's not a single princess who won't have to face being cursed or kidnapped, and the less we say about wicked step-mothers the better. And princes? They have a grand old time of it, fighting monsters and villains without even breaking a sweat – until they get married. All of sudden, they aren't allowed to rescue people any more. Kings just have to sit around while their daughters get kidnapped.

The Otherworlders argue that this how things should be and it stops the really bad things from happening - like the bad guys winning. But it's all very well to say that sort of thing if you're not a princess or a king or a vampire.

I always got very annoyed when I was child whenever anyone told me I couldn't do something because I was girl, for example. People would be very angry if we said characters had to act a certain way because of their gender, social status or race. So I thought... how would the vampires feel about it? And the princesses, and the princes and the witches and the villagers for that matter?

I feel very strongly that you shouldn't let other people decide who are.

And I hope that other people feel that way, too. Even about vampires.

Alicia L. Wright is the author of YA comic fantasies Eggs, Butter, Sugar and Disaster, published in 2011 and Miss Prince, published in 2014. You can download free samples of both books from her publisher's website. In her spare time Alicia also draws a webcomic based on Miss Prince and its sequels called Vampires Don't Belong in Fairytales. You can find her on: Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, deviantART and Tumblr. 

The MCBF2015 team are looking for your blogs, stories, book reviews, photos, poems - simply anything and everything to do with your favourite children’s books! Email mcbf@mmu.ac.uk to get involved.

Relaxing With Books After Revision

Mia Poppy Lomax Mchale, Saffron Burrows and Niall Devine.

Mia, Saffron and Niall wind down with books after a SATS revision session at Fairfield Road Primary School in Manchester.

The MCBF2015 team are looking for your blogs, stories, book reviews, photos, poems - simply anything and everything to do with your favourite children’s books! Email mcbf@mmu.ac.uk to get involved.

My Favourite Childhood Books

By Adam West

Such is the list of my childhood favourites it’s really quite tough choosing a winner from the pack. From early memories of my mum doing all the characters in different voices in Winnie The Pooh, to loving the beautifully detailed illustrations of Jill Barklem's Brambly Hedge series, I could happily write a whole book on the topic. But I think the books you treasure the most are the first ones you read by yourself. For me, like so many, they were written by Roald Dahl.

His genius, like that of his modern day contemporary, the equally revered J. K. Rowling, was to create worlds of sheer fantasy that suck the young reader in, completely immersing them in the tale. Where they differ is that Roald Dahl was able to abandon one world and reveal another time and again. Reeling some off in my mind now (Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, James & The Giant Peach, The Twits, Fantastic Mr Fox, The BFG, Matilda, Danny - Champion of The World), I realise another similarity with Rowling; all these titles and more have been plundered by the film industry, thirsty for the kind of ready-made fantasy world only the fertile mind of a creative writer can bring to life.

Roald didn’t have the kind of happy childhood I was fortunate enough to enjoy, and his books are pure escapism; heaven for a young, over-active imagination. Perhaps he found it cathartic, perhaps his goal was to provide escape for kids having a tough time like he did. Whatever, he left behind an incredible body of work which is still loved internationally today and speaks to the child in all of us.


The MCBF2015 team are looking for your blogs, stories, book reviews, photos, poems - simply anything and everything to do with your favourite children’s books! Email mcbf@mmu.ac.uk to get involved.