We also enjoyed Anne Fine’s ‘The Angel of Nitshill Road’

The main characters in ‘The Angel of Nitshill Road’ were

Celeste the new girl,

My Little Angel
Photo Credit: K.Hurley via Compfight

Barry Hunter, who was the bully

Wayne and Steven who helped him.

Lisa, who is a sensible girl.

Mark, Penny and Marigold who were being bullied.

Mr. Fairway, the teacher.

 

In this book Celeste solves

a bullying situation at Nitshill Road School

and turns it into a happier and fairer school.

 

Nicole explains:

Celeste finds three unhappy kids in Nitshill Road

and she makes life better for them.

 Bully Free Zone
Photo Credit: Eddie~S via Compfight

Nicole thought that this book was great.

She liked the way she always wanted to know

what was going to happen next.

What she really liked about the book

is that there are different ‘moods’ in it,

depending on what is happening in the plot.

Nicole also thinks that the author Jenny Nimmo

makes good use of words.

 

Julia thought that Celeste acted very strangely

She liked the part where Celeste first came to the school.

 

Niamh said that this was one of the best books

that she has ever read.

Her favourite part was when

Celeste called Penny chubby

because she meant no harm by it

and was actually trying to be helpful.

Niamh thought that it was

a super book.

 

Tadhg said that he really really liked the book.

His favourite part was when Barry Hunter

was taught a lesson.

He was left alone

because he was bullying the other children.

Tadhg said he learned that it is important

to make a good start at a new school.

 

Max said that he liked the book.

His favourite part was when Celeste

bit Barry Hunter on the leg,

because sometimes it is funny to read about

something bold another child might do,

even though you might not do it yourself.

 

Amy said that she loved the book

She learnt that it is not a good idea

to bite anyone on the leg.

 

Nicole said that she learned that

there is always a solution to a problem

 

Rebecca thought  

Celeste was very cheeky to her teacher Mr Fairway,

but perhaps this was important because

Mr Fairway was not looking after the children in his class.

He was letting the bullies get away with being mean.

 

Fiona favourite part was when Celeste

let everyone use her special golden pen

even the bully, Barry Hunter.

 

Senan on the other hand

would not recommend this book

because he says

when you think about it

Celeste does not put a stop to the bullying properly.

Senan says: ‘Do not try this at school or at home kids!

It would have been better to tell the teacher

instead of taking the law into your own hands.

 

Zac agrees he said that the solution

made no sense for making things better.

 

We found it interesting to ‘make connections’ between

this book and ‘The Dog Star’ by Jenny Nimmo

as we had questions about Celeste and who she was, really.

The author drops hints that show

there may be more to Celeste

than we think when we meet her first.

We also wondered about

who the ‘Dog Star’ really was too.

What we thought of ‘The Country Pancake’ by Anne Fine

Let us tell you about a book we enjoyed.

It was called ‘The Country Pancake’

and was written by Anne Fine

 

Clara said;

The main character was a school boy called Lance.

748319760_Fotolia_8484875_S.jpg
Creative Commons License Photo Credit: apparena via Compfight

The teachers that his class had were

Mr. Rushman who talked too much

and Mr Herbert and

Mrs. Maloney who thought the class were infants

and kept on repeating herself.

Yes she kept on repeating herself 😉

Did I mention, she kept on repeating herself?

The Principal of the school was Mrs. Spicer

And Flossy was a cow and Lance’s best friend.

 

JC explains: 

Miss Mirabelle (the substitute teacher) is very glamorous.

She is very different (in a good way) to the teachers

that the class have had before.

The class like her but she is a big fibber.

She doesn’t listen very well.

Sometimes she can be a bit mean to children who sniff.

She puts them in a cupboard in the back of the class.

Each class has to come up with an idea for fundraising for the school.

Miss Mirabelle can’t think of anything.

Mrs. Spicer the Principal is not happy with Miss Mirabelle.

Lance comes to the rescue.

boy, with back pack, running
Photo Credit: woodleywonderworks via Compfight

Shane said:

I liked the book.

My favourite part was when Lance

came up with the idea for fundraising.

But I don’t feel that I learnt anything

that I didn’t know already.

 

Senan liked Lance because he daydreams

and he likes Flossie the cow

because she is so understanding.

He liked the teachers because they are all so different.

His favourite part of the story was every part.

 

JC wrote:

I love the book.

My favourite part was the raffle because Mrs. Spicer,

the principal does not know how the cow will pick a winner.

 

Jack S said:

I really liked the book because it has an unusual plot.

I learned how to make money with a cow.

 

Clara said:

She learned a bit about cows.

 

Nicole said:

Her favourite part was when Lance had an idea for the raffle

 

Shauna said that she thought it was funny

when the Granny was disgusted

but would not miss the raffle all the same.

Shauna now knows what a country pancake is.

 

Cian said that he loved this book because it is like a real story.

 

Teacher thinks it is interesting to see how Lance’s

opinion of the teacher changes as the book goes on.

In this way Lance is on a journey.

 

Do you know what a ‘country pancake’ is 

If we told you any more we would feel

that we would ruin the story for you 🙂

We are looking forward to ‘making connections’

between this book and ‘The Art Hater’

as they are both school stories

by Anne Fine

about fundraising.

A cow [15/365]
Creative Commons License Photo Credit: Dave Wild via Compfight

These are useful comprehension questions from the excellent website: Primary Resources.co.uk

Jenny Nimmo’s ‘The Dog Star’ – A Big Hit with 2nd Class Room 6

From ‘The Daily Reader’ newspaper:

“It was confirmed today that of all the Jenny Nimmo books that 2nd Class Room 6 have read that ‘The Dog Star’ is their very favourite. A poll was held in class and these were the results. ‘The Owl Tree’ and ‘Tom and the Pterosaur’ both got one vote each. ‘The Stone Mouse’ received six. But ‘The Dog Star’ was the runaway success with twenty two votes.

Some people felt that perhaps the last book read by the class is always going to do best because it is more recent and clearer in their minds, but supporters of ‘The Dog Star’ said, that though they enjoyed all the Jenny Nimmo books we have read so far, ‘The Dog Star’ was simply the best.

Later in the year, 2nd Class Room 6 are going to read ‘The Snow Spider’ by Jenny Nimmo. This is a challenging read and it will be interesting to see, if ‘The Dog Star’ will be knocked off top position”.

 

So why was ‘The Dog Star’ so popular?

 

We agreed that it was about something

a lot of children dream about:

a dog of their own.

 

But the story is not that straight forward.

There are a lot of difficulties

in the story for Marty

who is the main character.

 

Her older sister Clare puts her in a very difficult

situation and she doesn’t know whether to

make her sister happy by being mean to

Miss Theresa Tree or make her Dad happy

by being friendly to her.

 

We found the story

serious,

mysterious

and magical.

We prefer serious books.

For example we preferred the serious

‘Owl Tree’ by Jenny Nimmo

to the ‘Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark’

by Jill Tomlinson, even though it made us laugh.

 

We ‘made the connection’ between the eight and a half years,

that it takes the light from the Dog Star to reach earth,

and the fact that Marty is eight and a half years old

and that Marty’s Mum went home to God

eight and a half years ago.

 

Having already read ‘The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark’

we knew about Orion and his belt,

and what the Dog Star was, didn’t need to be explained to us.

 

Even at the end of the book,

we were left wondering about

‘The Dog Star’.

 

What was it really?

Where did it come from?

 

We would give this book ten out of ten

and would recommend it to children

between the ages seven and nine.

 

If you would like to comment, 

please double click the title at the top of a post

or the ‘Continue Reading’ box at the bottom 

and a comment box will appear.

We would LOVE to hear from you.

 

 

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.

 

 

 

Podcast: What did you like about ‘The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark’?

We have just finished our class novel

‘The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark’

by Jill Tomlinson.

The children in 2nd Class, Room 6

enjoyed the humour

and appreciated

that the story followed a pattern.

But let them tell you about it.

Isabella is today’s interviewer.

As part of the work we are doing on owls,

the boys and girls enjoyed watching barn owls on this link today.

Perhaps they might like to check it out again at home.

Click on this link for a video of a barn owl in flight from a nature website called Arkive.org

Click on ‘Continue Reading’ below to comment.

Book Review: It was a Dark and Stormy Night’ by Allan Ahlberg

Teacher read  ‘It Was A Dark And Stormy Night’

to the children in 2nd Class, Room 6.

‘It was A Dark And Stormy Night’ by Allan Ahlberg

It was a big hit.

It is a ‘laugh out loud’ book with plenty of scope

for dramatisation and funny voices.

 

Great fun to read aloud in class!

It was impossible to predict what was going to happen next in the story.

But guessing was fun too.

 

Book Review by Jack S

Antonio is the hero.

He is eight, the same age as me.

.

Antonio is captured by brigands.

The Chief of the Brigands is bored.

He tells Antonio to tell a story to pass the time.

 

Antonio’s story is about

pirates

and sharks,

crocodiles

and killer parrots.

There is a castle in his story with a ‘Thingy’ in the moat.

 

Antonio uses the story telling

to distract the brigands

so he can escape,

and get back to to his own family.

 

I would recommend this book to children my age. It made me laugh.

Create your own Animation

Finally we made a podcast of what we thought was best about this book.

If you would like to comment,

please double click

‘Continue Reading’ below

and a comment box will appear.

Books we enjoyed this year

Book Reviews by Room 6

‘Beware of the Killer Coat’ by Susan Gates

Teacher read us the story, ‘Beware of the Killer Coat by Susan Gates.

It was a very funny story about a boy called Andrew.

Andrew thought that his new coat was really a monster that was out to get him.

This coat swallowed the important notes that came home from school.

Andrew’s gloves also disappeared.

This book was illustrated by Josip Lizatovic.

His pictures are very funny too.

They really bring the story to life.

 

‘Once Dark and Stormy Night’ by Alan Ahlberg

is a book about a boy who was kidnapped by brigands.

Jack said it was confusing.

Mo said it was funny and interesting.

Ryan said a lot happened in the story.

 

‘Care of Henry’ by Anne Fine

is a book about boy

who had to decided who to stay with when his Mum was in hospital.

It was important that his dog would be minded too.

 

Most children liked the book a lot.

Though some children said

it was not very funny or interesting or adventurous.