The Fox and the Star by Coralie Bickford-Smith (Penguin)
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The Fox and the Star by Coralie Bickford-Smith (Penguin) A fox lives in a deep, dense forest depicted in stylised pictures which are strikingly and strongly patterned while evoking fresh sensations on every spread, using a predominantly blue, white and grey colour palette. The permanent bright splash of colour in the forest is Fox with his yellow- specked orange coat. Fox’s only friend is Star who lights his way through life. Then one night, Star does not appear. In a story which resembles the pattern of a traditional tale, Fox goes in search of his lost companion. Overall learning aims of this teaching sequence: . To talk confidently about picture books and responses individual to them . To explore how language is used effectively to paint a picture for the reader and deepen their understanding . To look at how words and pictures are used in a picture books to deepen the reader’s understanding of the story . To explore important themes of friendship, loss, courage and perseverance . To explore the story through a variety of teaching approaches including drama and role-play . To write in role from another character’s perspective This teaching sequence is designed for a Year 1 or 2 class. Overview of this teaching sequence. This teaching sequence is approximately 4 weeks long if spread out over 20 sessions. The book supports teachers to teach about character development, emotional response to issues faced in a story and is a fantastic text to support personal, social and emotional development; exploring the issues a character faces with shyness so intense that he wants to always blend into society unnoticed. Teaching Approaches: Writing Outcomes: Response to illustration List poems Looking at language Role Language on the wall banks Odes Use of Multimodal texts Thought Dance Bubbles Notes Drama and Role-Play Non-chronological Observational Drawing reports Writing in role Conscience Alley Story Booktalk Storymapping predictions Graph of Emotion Riddles Publishing Persuasive letters ©The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education. You may use this teaching sequence freely in your school but it cannot be commercially published or reproduced or used for anything other than educational purposes without the express permission of CLPE. Responses to reading Storymaps Oral retellings Written retelling from an alternative perspective Links to other books: Books directly referenced for additional material in this sequence: Wild Animals of the North by Dieter Braun (Flying Eye) A Beetle is Shy by Dianna Hutts Aston and Sylvia Long (Chronicle) The Big Book of Bugs by Yuval Zommer (Thames and Hudson) Hey Little Bug! By James Carter (Frances Lincoln) Poetry Pie by Roger McGough (Puffin) It will also be important for children to be able to draw on knowledge of traditional story structures and the emotional journeys that take place within them. You may want to revisit some well-known fairy tales through a collection such as Yummy by Lucy Cousins (Walker) Books that also explore loss, friendship and character growth: Dogger by Shirley Hughes (Red Fox) Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems (Walker) The Boy Who Lost His Bumble by Trudi Esberger (Child’s Play) A Bit Lost by Chris Haughton (Walker) Augustus and His Smile by Catherine Rayner (Little Tiger) I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen (Walker) The Robot and the Bluebird by David Lucas (Andersen Press) ©The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education. You may use this teaching sequence freely in your school but it cannot be commercially published or reproduced or used for anything other than educational purposes without the express permission of CLPE. Links to other useful resources: Video clips: Teacher Subject knowledge about foxes: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04gvbdr or can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4yESklYYfk Foxes caught on camera in their natural environment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWbdY5p9mTg&index=4&list=PL9SLkANZIEtU_MWrOu0B5 7hc0 MONo0mNM Chris Packham on Springwatch: Introduction to foxes: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01f9hf1 Springwatch: Foxes hunting rabbits: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p007xsrz Nocturnal Animals on CBeebies Our Planet: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p011n1lx Useful websites: http://foxproject.org.uk/foxy-facts-for-children/ http://www.onekind.org/education/animals_a_z/fo x_red Teaching sessions Session 1: Response to illustration and looking at language: The picture books featured on Core Books Online have been chosen because of the quality of the illustrations they contain and the ways in which the illustrations work with the text to create meaning for the reader. Children will need time and opportunities to enjoy and respond to the pictures, and to talk together about what the illustrations contribute to their understanding of the text. Children can develop their responses to the book by drawing or painting in a similar style to the illustrations. Making word collections is a way of focussing on the language of a text. Children can make collections of words that describe a particular character, their feelings, a place, an event or a situation. Collecting words in this way helps children to have a more focussed awareness of the ways language affects our perceptions and understandings and the ways in which the author creates the readers' response. Read the first double page spread in the book and look carefully at the illustration. What is the forest like? How does it feel to be there? . Focus on the adjectives in the text that paint the picture for us. Look at the way the author doesn’t overuse these. This page focuses the reader on the setting so the adjectives are reserved for this and not used for the fox. What does a deep, dense forest look like? Ask the children to try to visualise this in their heads, and describe what they see. Clarify this complex vocabulary and build understanding of the setting by either visiting a local wood or forest or, if this is not possible, looking at different images or watching a ©The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education. You may use this teaching sequence freely in your school but it cannot be commercially published or reproduced or used for anything other than educational purposes without the express permission of CLPE. virtual forest walk video, such as: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBBdqY050V8 What words or phrases could you use to describe the forest? What can you see? Hear? Smell? How does it feel to be there? Collect banks of vocabulary to add to a working wall. You could use this to build up a free verse poem to describe the setting. Working in groups, invite each child to write a word, phrase or sentence on a sentence strip that best describes the forest for them. Put the lines together and have the children best think of an order for the strips, making small edits to improve the flow if necessary. This could also be done as a whole class activity with less confident writers. e.g. Tall trees all around, A rustling in the leaves, Birds chirping, Can’t see the end of the path, It’s dark and dense. Give the children opportunities to think about how they might perform their poem to the class to further evoke the atmosphere of what it is like to be in the forest. How will they use their voices? Will they use actions? How will they work together? . Present these on the working wall next to images of deep, dense forests. Session 2: Activating prior knowledge and Role on the Wall Role on the wall is a technique that uses a displayed outline of the character to record feelings (inside the outline) and outward appearances (outside the outline) at various stopping points across the story. Using a different colour at each of the stopping points allows you to track changes in the character’s emotional journey. You can include known facts such as physical appearance, age, gender, location and occupation, as well as subjective ideas such as likes/dislikes, friends/enemies, attitudes, motivations, secrets and dreams. Re-read the first page then turn to the next double page spread. Look at the illustration of the fox – hiding the text from the children. Ask the children; What do we already know about foxes? What do we think we know? What do we want to find out? Collect on grids, either as a shared or group activity. Tell the children you have a link to a fox-cam, set up to record the action of real foxes in the wild. Watch the first clip that has been caught on camera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWbdY5p9mTg&index=4&list=PL9SLkANZIEtU_MWr Ou0 B57hc0MONo0mNM What more can we add from this? . Now read the text that accompanies the image. Does this reflect what we thought about foxes? Look at the impact of the words the author has chosen to use: small, timid, afraid and ©The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education. You may use this teaching sequence freely in your school but it cannot be commercially published or reproduced or used for anything other than educational purposes without the express permission of CLPE. the phrases: ‘the trees reached higher than the tips of his ears’ and ‘afraid to stray far from his den’. How do these words and phrases make us feel about the character? This is a good opportunity to explore and teach some of the VGAP terminology in context – adjectives, expanded noun phrases, powerful verbs. Create a ‘role on the wall’ for the fox from this text. What can we say about what we think we know about him so far? Sessions 3 and 4: Poetry – writing odes Odes are formal poems written in honour of a person, thing or place They tend to be formal in tone and are addressed to the subject they are written about.