At the heart of the book, is the story of Two Wolves, an old Indian story. It's main focus is on Ben and his sister Olive. The story is told from Ben's perspective as he tries to make sense of the confusing and frightening events of fleeing the police with his parents and then being stranded in the bush. It is a suspenseful read and each chapter leaves the reader guessing. The book has given rise to some excellent learning opportunities about reading and writing.
Personification
Olive often describes her father as being Maugrim, a reference to the Wolf chief of police in "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis. We watched a clip that showed the character of Maugrim. The students wrote down the characteristics of Maugrim, which we then compared to the children's father. We discussed how the wolf portrayed the human qualities of anger, hate and malice, which is why Olive compares her father to a wolf.
We then discussed what personification was with the help of an online dictionary. We discussed how non human things can portray human qualities. After looking at some other examples of personification, our students created some of their own examples in pairs.
Making Pictures in our head
Visualising what we read is a good strategy for reading and is one of the Daily 5 reading strategies that we were working on. We referred to the character Ben. He is always visualising movies in his head throughout the story.
We discussed what visualisation was and how the author used words effectively so that the reader can visualise what is happening in the story.
We discussed what visualisation was and how the author used words effectively so that the reader can visualise what is happening in the story.
A quick assessment to see that students could use this strategy was to draw a picture of what the students remembered happened in the previous chapter. We read half of the chapter and then the students drew what they remembered most. We discussed how it helped to remember small details & how using prior knowledge of the bush and the information in the text helped to form a picture of what was happening. We then predicted what would happen next in the chapter.
What have enjoyed the most about Two Wolves? What have you you learned about reading and writing this term? How do you think the story will end?
