Tag: teacheridea

In April 1999 I received an email from Yasmin Greenhalgh, who works as a Children’s Library Assistant at the Bowen Library in Maroubra, Australia. During the Easter holiday Ms. Greenhalgh decided to indulge her life-long love of Dahl’s books and plan a literary festival for the children. She writes: “We’ve tried to do activities that work for most ages 6-16yrs, and it has been immensely popular already – everyone seems to be appreciative of the fact we are doing something with a learning/literacy bent to it – instead of just entertaining the kids.” What follows is a general outline of some of the activities she planned. If you have any specific questions or comments, feel free to email her at ygreenhalgh@hotmail.com. If your school does something similar, tell me about it!

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Film Festival

There have been some great Dahl movies made… Why not show them? Ms. Greenhalgh writes that her library scheduled a one hour session and showed films that they borrowed from a children’s library film circuit. Apparently this idea was a smashing success – they more than quadrupled the usual size of their audience!

Fractured Fairytales Workshop

Activities: reading excerpts from Revolting Rhymes out loud to the children and then encouraging them to create their own retelling of a traditional fairytale. Suggest changing the endings/characters, putting themselves in the story, making it rhyme/rap, telling it back-to-front, etc. Afterwards “publish” the results (read: type it up/collate and give them copies).

Revolting Recipes

Ms. Greenhalgh writes, “How could I not do this!? This session is next week and already over booked! We will make lickable wallpaper for nurseries (we were going to make frobscottle as well but we have too many kids now). This activity exists purely because of the wonderful book by the same name.”

Roald Dahl Quiz and Costumes Night

Have staff/kids/parents all dress up in costumes inspired by Dahl’s books. Decorate the auditorium/classroom like a chocolate factory (or another famous Dahl setting). Refer to The Roald Dahl Quiz Book and stage a game show for the children. Award chocolates to those that answer questions correctly.

This fantastic introduction to Dahl’s life and work was sent in by Frankie Meehan, an ESL Teacher at United World College of SE Asia, Singapore. If you have any questions, please email him at fme@uwcsea.edu.sg. Thanks Frankie!

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Read the text and then answer the questions that follow it.

Roald Dahl was born on 13th September, 1916 in Llandaff, South Wales. Dahl’s parents were Norwegian. His father died while Roald was still a child.

Dahl attended Llandaff Cathedral School for just two years. Then from the ages of nine to thirteen he attended St. Peter’s Preparatory School in Weston–super–Mare, England. He did not enjoy the school because many of the teachers were cruel and often caned the students. Dahl was good at cricket and swimming, but he performed poorly in class. One of his main hobbies was reading, and some of his favourite novelists were the adventure writers Rudyard Kipling and H. Rider Haggard.

When Dahl was thirteen his family moved to Kent in England, and he was sent to Repton Public School. Sadly, Repton was even harsher than his old school. The headmaster enjoyed beating children and the older students used the younger ones as servants. However, there was one good thing about the school. Every few months, the chocolate company, Cadburys, sent boxes of chocolates to Repton for the students to test. This happy memory gave Dahl the idea for his most famous novel, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

After school, Dahl decided that he wanted to travel. He got a job with the Shell Oil Company and two years later was sent to East Africa. In his autobiography, Going Solo, he recounts some of the exciting adventures there, including the time a black mamba entered his friend’s house and a snake catcher had to be called in.

In 1939, World War 11 started. Dahl joined the RAF (Royal Air Force) and learned to fly warplanes. Unfortunately, on his first flight into enemy territory he ran out of fuel and crashed in the Libyan desert. He fractured his skull but managed to crawl out of the burning plane.

Dahl started writing in the 1940s while based in the USA. His first story was a newspaper account of his air crash. In 1945 he moved back home but in the early fifties returned to America, where he met his first wife, the actress Patricia Neal. They had five children together but got divorced in 1983. Dahl remarried soon after. The last years of his life were very happy and he wrote some of his best books during this period: The BFG, The Witches and Matilda. Roald Dahl died on 23rd November 1990 in Oxford, England.

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Questions

1. How old was Roald Dahl when he died?
2. How many schools did he attend?
3. How many times was he married?
4. How many children did he have?
5. Complete the following timeline of Dahl’s life (fill in all the blanks!):

1916	Dahl was born in South Wales
1923-25
	St Peter’s Preparatory School, Weston-super-Mare
1934-39	Shell Oil, London
1936-39
1939
1941	Published a newspaper story in the USA
1945
	Got married to …

6. Find words in the text with the following meanings:

a) ___________ = wicked, liking to hurt people

b) ___________ = a story about a person’s own life

c) ___________ = someone who fights against you

d) ___________ = an area of land controlled by soldiers

e) ___________ = cracked

f) ___________ = ended their marriage

g) ___________ = got married again

In August 1999 I received an email from some elementary school students learning about Roald Dahl. Miss Neal and Miss Mathers have come up with some great ideas to get their grade 2/3 students interested in reading. Here are some of the kids’ impressions so far, as well as a recap of the activities they’ve done.

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Hi

I liked all of Roald Dahl books, but my favouite is The BFG. I like The BFG because once we did Hot seating in class and I got to be Sophie. – From Ashlee

I like the Witches the best. When Bruno Jenkins is a little fat mouse is my favourite part. – From Jake

I like best of all George’s Marvellous Medicine. The best bit about it is where the Grandma grew bigger. – From Meegan

I think that Roald Dahl is a very good writer. I like The Witches because it is very scarey! – From Jess

I like The Twits because they are funny and they are mean to each other! And they are really funny. – From Rebecca

I like the Witches the best because the boy got turned into a mouse. I didn’t like the Grand High Witch because she was ugly. – From Robert

Roald Dahl is a nice writer. he is very famous. All is good books are well written. He takes care with his writing. He is nice. – From Stevee

My favouraite book by Roald Dahl is The Witches. George’s Marvellous Medicine is also my favourite. – From Damian

I like The Witches. How long did Roald Dahl write books? – From Kirstie

I like George’s Marvellous Medicine. I think that Quentin Blake is a good illustrator. Roald Dahl is a good author. – From Rebekah

My favourite book by Roald Dahl is The BFG. – From Mitchell

My favourite book is The Witches. I like the characters that Roald Dahl has in his books. – From Sheree

I like George’s Marvellous Medicine because I liked it when George’s Grandma grew and made a hole in the roof. – From Stacey

My favourite book is Fantastic Mr Fox – I liked this book because Mr Fox lives underground and he is good at stealing things and that’s all. – From Kai

I like the Witches because the Grand High Witch is really scary and and I enjoyed listening to it. – From Bradley

I like Fantastic Mr Fox because he dug big tunnles and tricked people to get food. The Witches is good because they turn people into mice and that was funny. – From Jackson

My favourite book is the BFG. I like this book because it is about a giant and a girl and I like their adventures. – From Stuart

My favourite book is The Witches when Bruno eats six chocolate bars and one of the chocolate bars made Bruno into a mouse. – From Mark

I like The Witches because if you are a witch you would have a smile on your face. – From Courtney

My favourite book is George’s Marvellous Medicine because I liked it when George’s grandma grew bigger. – From Emma

I like The Witches because of the ugly grand high witch and because they were so bold. Some parts were funny like when the witches were smelling out the boy and he smelled like dogs droppings! – From David

I like The Witches best because I like the Grand High Witch. – From Christopher

My favourite book as The Witches because when she takes her mask off she looks weird. I think that it is funny when all the witches turn into mice. – From Alice

I like all of Roald Dahl’s books, but my favourite two are The Witches and George’s Marvellous Medicine. I liked George’s Marvellous Medicine because of George’s very clever little brain! – From Kylie

I liked Fantastic Mr Fox the best because I think that Mr Fox is really clever. – From Jhy

My favourite book is The Witches because I liked the characters, they were all really good. I also liked The Twits, my favourite part was when they got stuck on the ceiling! – From Gina

We have been doing lots of very fun activities. We wrote dream recipes for the BFG. Some of us wrote Golden Phizzwizards and others wrote really disgusting Trogglehumpers!! We also wrote letters to Mr Wonka asking if we could visit his chocolate factory. We role played various characters from Roald dahl’s stories. Muddle Wump, Sophie, the BFG, Bruno Jenkins, Grandma (from the Witches) were all role played by members from our class. It was hilarious! We will write to you again soon and share some of our work.

Thank you for reading our letters,
From 2/3 students and Miss Neal and Miss Mathers

In June 2000 I received an email from a boy named Evan and his mother Susan describing the Dahl Day that Evan’s teacher organized. It sounds like it was a smashing success! Here’s what they had to say…

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From Evan:

Dear Kristine,

We had the best time at our Dahl Day!!!

we ate Snozzcumbers, Mud Burgers, Onion Rings, Hansel & Gretel Ribs, Stinkbugs Eggs, Wormy Spaghetti, Bruce’s Cake, Waspstings, Peach Juice Frobscottle ( which was the best!!) Butterscotch, Frogs Legs, Bunce’s Doughnuts, George’s Soup. We made the Enormous Crocodile that turned out so cool the Middle School Kids used it as a centerpiece for their dance!!!! We had peaches and blueberries.

The news came!! We were on tv at 5:00!!!!

Everyone came in costume. One boy Cale was Willy his Mom made him a great purple coat. My little brother (he’s4) and I came as Oompa-Loompas we even made up a dance! We had 4 Sophies, 4 Matildas, a Mother Christmas, a Spittler (that was Tyler he cut a dinosaur costume apart it was great!) We had a George and Charlie a Mrs. Wormwood a Miss Honey, A BFG, Phillip was The Fox he had the best mask!!

My teacher was Mrs. Prachett we put a hamster in her Sweet Shop!

Our Chokey was a rectangle box spraypainted brown,we poked holes in it but we diddn’t put nails in it!! We painted two refrigerator boxes blue then we stood them up and lettered Sweet Shop on it. My class made candy decorations we glued them on then we asked parents for unusual candy and we had 2 bookcases for the candy shelves we had plastic jarswith the candy in it. At the end of the day Mrs. Pratchett sold us candy we used our money we earned for good behavior and homework.

We finished our quizbowl, my team came in 1st in our division. We got our questions from the Quiz Book and my kids in my class made them up.

Oh we made lickable wallpaper and Bird Pie and Audrey’s mother made Candy coated pencils.

My teacher gave us brown medicine bottles and we had to create our own medicine. We decorated the bottles and wrote information about what our medicine could do. Mine was a pill to make bad people good.

We visited the 1st and 2nd grade classrooms and now all the little kids want to be in Mrs. Rodrigues class!

We hung a turtle(Alfie) and Crocodile pinata from the ceiling. We hung childrens patio furniture upside down from the ceiling (The Twits) and we found a mechanical seagull and hung him also (James).

Our class wrote letters to Mrs. Dahl. Do you know where we could send them so she could read them? I know we can’t have her address but is there somewhere safe to send them to her?

That is about all I can remember. Thank you very much for answering my e-mail, my class will be very excited! If our pictures turn out maybe I could send you some.

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From Susan, Evan’s mom:

Thank you for responding to Evan. This unit was so much fun to do. Your web site helped me so much. I spent many late nights on it and always found new interesting information.

Evan’s teacher Mrs. Rodrigues is an exceptional teacher and over the years has done some really neat things with her classes, she told me this was the best thing she ever did with a class. I think this is something her class will remember forever! She was not expecting them to be as excited as they were. She told me everything they did took so long because they wanted their assignments to be perfect. Mrs. Rodrigues (Deb) incorporated a lot of educational ideas into her assignments so creatively they had no idea they were learning ! Do you know if there is a teacher resource book on Roald Dahl? We are considering putting one together. It seemed the more we did the more ideas we came up with. We didn’t even get to half our ideas! Deb is going to start Sept 13 next year with a birthday party to start the unit and take the whole school year. We started about four months ago which wasn’t a lot of time considering how much there is that can be done!

Thank you so much for responding to Evan and for your fantastic web site Mrs. Rodrigues her class and I really appreciate your time and hard work.

In April 1998 I received an email from Vicki Hogrefe, a third grade teacher at Sylvania Schools in Ohio. Her students used the Internet to locate my page and then send me a letter with their messages about Dahl.

P.S. My favorite quote is Jeffrey’s near the bottom…!

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I think Mr. Dahl’s books are fun to read. – Nate Zona

I like Mr. Dahl’s books. – Ben Wurst

Daer Mrs. Howard, I like Mr. Dahl’s books. I love to read. – love, Maggie Schaedler

I like “James and the Giant Peach” because the insects are real. – Erin Zeiler

Do you still print books? – Joe Smith

I like Mr. Dahl’s books. My favorite book is “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. – Daniel Richardson

I have fun reading his books. They’re funny! – Natalie Rich

Dear Kris, I like Roald Dahl. I liked “The Witches”. – Matt Page

Did Roald Dahl have fun making his books? – SCOTT

What was his favorite book he ever made? – STEVE

I like all of Roald Dahl’s books. – Jay Kosmider

“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” is my favorite book by Roald Dahl. – Gordie Howe

I like the book we’re reading (James). My favorite part is when Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spike get squashed. – Marc Young

“James and the Giant Peach” is a good book. – Ryan holtz

I like all of Roald Dahl’s books. – Matthew Gilliland

I like “James and the Giant Peach” because Aunt Spiker reminds me of my mom. – Jeffrey

I really like Mr. Dahl’s books. – Max Evans

I like James And the Giant Peach beacuse I like peaches – DEVYN DURAN

These exercises were sent in by Jocelyn Allen, an Australian teaching English in Germany. They have been specially designed for non native English speakers. Thanks Jocelyn!

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Knowledge (15 words)

1. List ten words in the story that are connected with fear.

2. List five verbs that describe the movement of the child along the path.

Comprehension (200 words)

3. What effect did the carpet first have on the child?

4. What was he afraid of as he walked across the carpet?

5. What motivated and encouraged the child to start and continue on his journey?

6. What did the child see as he looked down on the carpet?

7. What was his mother doing?

Analysis

8. Summarise the short story “The Wish”. (150 words)

9. We are shown the events of the story through the eyes of the narrator and the child. Comparing the two styles, who presents the more interesting or effective view for the reader? Why? (150 words)

Synthesis

10. Imagine that the mother is watching the boy. What is her reaction? What does she see? What does she feel? (150 words)

11. Rewrite the ending of the story, which has the boy successfully completing the journey. (100 words)

Review

12. Why is the story called “The Wish”? (100 words)

13. Is “The Wish” a story about self-confidence overcoming fear or about greed? Argue your case. (100 words)

14. What frightens you? What do you do about frightening things, face them or avoid them? (100 words)

These exercises were sent in by Jocelyn Allen, an Australian teaching English in Germany. They have been specially designed for non native English speakers. Thanks Jocelyn!

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Vocabulary Work

1. List 10 words from the story which describe Mrs Foster as being either nervous or afraid.

2. Find one word in the story which means the same as:

a. unhappy, disappointed
b. very tired
c. find out about something
d. an odd habit or tendency
e. for a short time

Comprehension

1. Why is Mrs Foster upset with her husband at the beginning of the story?

2. How did her husband make her anxious the following morning?

3. What crucial decision did she finally make?

4. What were Mrs Foster’s feelings at the end of the story?

Discussion Points

1. Was Mrs Foster right to want to live in Paris? Should husbands and wives always go away together?

2. Do you sympathise or not with Mrs Foster? Do you think she should go to prison? Do you understand why she let her husband die?

Writing

1. Write a short letter (100 words) from Mrs Foster to her daughter in Paris. Describe what happened when she returned home and describe her plans for the future.

Review

1. Is the ending to the story predictable or unpredictable? Give reasons.