Making Connections: Data & English: Our Favourite Class Novels

This week we have been talking about the class novels we have read:

 

Jill Tomlinson’s

‘The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark’

‘The Aardvark Who Wasn’t Sure’

and Jenny Nimmo’s

‘The Owl Tree’

and ‘The Stone Mouse’

 

We talked about the ones we preferred

and why we preferred them better.

 

First we collected data from the class

to see which book by Jill Tomlinson

2nd Class Room 6 preferred:

‘The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark’

or ‘The Aardvark Who Wasn’t Sure’?

 

 

Then we made a bar graph.

Some children were absent

and Teacher got to vote as well.

You can see from the graph that

‘The Aardvark Who Wasn’t Sure’

was our favourite book, by a score of 16 to 12.

 

Then we collected data to see which

class novel about owls, the class preferred:

Jill Tomlinson’s ‘The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark’

or Jenny Nimmo’s ‘Owl Tree’?

 

We made a bar graph to show the results.

‘The Owl Tree’ was the winner there.

Once again the score was 16 to 12.

 

The next day we took a vote,

to collect data for this bar graph

to find out which story by Jenny Nimmo

the class preferred:

‘The Owl Tree’ or

‘The Stone Mouse’?

 

Teacher got to vote again and

there were less children absent,

so there were 30 in our survey.

‘The Stone Mouse’ was the winner here

by a very close score of 16 to 14.

 

 

Niamh said ‘The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark’

was a very funny book that made her ‘laugh out loud’.

So why did the students in 2nd Class Room 6

prefer ‘The Aardvark who wasn’t sure’?

 

The Aardvark Who Wasn’t Sure’

The children said this was a funny book too

and that they learned lots of new things

about animals who live in the African ‘veldt’.

 

‘The Owl Tree’

‘The Owl Tree’ was the book children preferred

of the two about owls. 2nd Class Room 6 felt it was

an unusual and serious book and that it was more grown up.

 

They liked the way Jenny Nimmo

worked a little bit of magic into every day life.

 

Cian said it gave him ‘mixed feelings’ because predicting

what was going to happen to the tree worried him.

 

John Paul said he liked the description of the food

that Granny Diamond brought out to her ‘trick or treat’ visitors.

 

Isabella said that it was interesting

to try and imagine what Mr. Rock looked like.

 

Fiona said that it was a good book to help

some one understand a disability or someone who looked different.

 

However good ‘The Owl Tree’ was the children thought that

‘The Stone Mouse’ was even better.

 

‘The Stone Mouse’

There were so many problems for Ellie

and ‘The Stone Mouse’ to overcome.

 

Isabella said she was interested

in finding out why Ted did what he did.

 

Alice was fascinated by the connection

between Ellie and ‘The Stone Mouse’,

where they both seemed to be worrying

at the same time.

 

Alice thought that it was interesting

that Ted is the short for Teddy

and that usually Teddies are soft and cuddly

but that Ted in the story was not.

 

Our next class novel is ‘The Dog Star’ by Jenny Nimmo.

Teacher says that there is magic and a mystery in it

and we are looking forward to it.

 

 

 

A Collage Like Nia’s

When we read ‘Emlyn’s Moon’ by Jenny Nimmo, one of the characters, Nia made a collage.
We thought this was a good idea and decided to make one too.

A Collage Like Nia’s

This one is Aoibhin’s to see the other works of art click on the link above.

What we found out about Jenny Nimmo.

Her Childhood

Jenny Nimmo was born on 15th January 1944.

To start with there was just her and her Mum.

Then they moved to her uncle’s free-range chicken farm.

When she was only six Jenny was sent away to boarding school.

It must have been hard to be so far away from her Mum.

It isn’t surprising that she didn’t enjoy boarding school.

She was was happier when she went to a secondary school.

She was told that she should become an actress.

At school, Jenny was quiet but she could be giddy too.

She loved to make people laugh.

Jenny Nimmo always loved reading and writing.

She read all the books in the junior school library by the time she was nine.

She had to persuade the librarian to let her join the senior school library.

 

Now she is an adult…

Jenny now lives in Wales with her family.

She writes after she has done her chores and fed all the chickens, rabbits and cats!

 

This is how she writes

She uses a soft, 3B pencil

and rewrites, makes changes and proof reads as she goes along.

When she’s sure she has made all the changes, she wants to,

her husband reads the story

and types it for her.

 

Her books

Many of her books are about ‘magic’ in real life situations.

The books that she has written that we have read are

‘Tom and the Pterosaur’,

‘The Owl Tree’,

‘The Stone Mouse’

‘The Dog Star’

‘The Snow Spider’

but she has written many, many more.

by Aoibhin and Nadine

THE STONE MOUSE and THE OWL TREE and THE DOG STAR were all written by Jenny Nimmo.

How are these stories the same?

How are they different?

Of the three books, which is your favourite?

Why is it your favourite?