Students begin with narrative writing to quickly boost their writing production, to learn the foundational skill of Focus, and to become comfortable with key classroom habits and routines they will use all year. Then, students apply their new observational focus to some lively readings from Roald Dahl’s memoir, Boy: Tales of Childhood, and learn how to work closely with textual evidence.
Boy: Tales of Childhood by Roald Dahl
EXTRA: Excerpt from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
EXTRA: Excerpt from Tony Hawk: Professional Skateboarder by Tony Hawk and Sean Mortimer
EXTRA: Excerpt from The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
EXTRA: Excerpt from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
EXTRA: Excerpts from Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai
Topic & Theme: The impression of a moment
Reading: Observe how an author creates a character
Writing: Focus on a moment in the text and develop a unique perspective about it
Activity Highlights: Respond with constructive comments to peers' writing
Text Features: Memoir with vivid descriptions and 20th century British slang
Dahl’s Boy: Tales of Childhood deals with Dahl’s experiences as a public school boy in Britain in the 1920s. A few of these incidents involve cruelty of an adult toward the school children, including corporal punishment and the cruel behavior of a dorm supervisor.