Private Peaceful - Michael Morpurgo: Guided Reading 15 lesson plans and Resources

This product has been developed as a result of teaching this book to my class for a three week period of time. We spend 90 minutes each day on reading, reading skills, comprehension, inference, deduction and other developing skills.

The product includes:

• 15 detailed lesson plans (one plan per page)
• Answer keys included for each of the daily comprehension set questions
• Photocopiable comprehension questions for pupil's reading response books to avoid them having to write the questions out as well as full sentence responses
• Photocopiable Resource Sheets to support the development of further reading skills, handling information, summarising, sequencing the plot, developing time lines and investigating characterisation.

The book is an incredible resource, taking the journey of two brothers from life in their small village with their mother and third brother, to training and journeying to France to fight in the trenches of World War 1, to an ultimate tragic ending for one of the brothers.

We used this book as a cross curricular approach to our studies in World War 1, followed by World War 2, and the book astounded the children - particular the two timeline activity at the end of the three week programme. We also introduced Reading Journals for every child so that they could record their responses to the comprehension quizzes and activities linked to the chapters.

The planning is detailed and will allow any teacher to follow the lessons. Page references are given, as well as answer keys in note form for the daily comprehension quiz.

Specific activities, beyond daily comprehension include:

• Mapping chapter details - what have we learnt?
• What have we learnt? What do we want to know? What do we think will happen?
• Who's Who - and what do they do?
• Regular talking points about plot lines, actions and ideas about the book
• Issues to think about - before discussing in the following session
• Character development/mapping changes/analysis
• How time is managed within the book - analysing gaps in time
• Actions, reactions, feelings of main characters to the same scene
• Time line of key events (missing brother, training for army)
• Effects of war on locality
• Understanding why the author would add letters to the text as a method for adding further details
• Developing tension

Key Skills

• Comprehension
• Inference
• Deduction
• Prediction
• Structure of novel
• Character development
• Summarising
• Extending answers using detailed references to the text
• Understanding resolutions
• Reading with fluency and expression

We think this pack includes all the resources you need for an enjoyable three week (15 lesson) project using Private Peaceful as your key text. Of course, each lesson can be broken down further, and can easily be turned into 30 lessons if you wish.

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INSPIReducation