KS: Lower KS2
Year Group: Year 3
Literary Theme: Dreams & Curiosity
Author(s): Roald Dahl
This is a three-session spelling seed for the book The BFG by Roald Dahl. Below is the coverage from Appendix 1 of the National Curriculum 2014.
Spelling Seeds have been designed to complement Writing Roots by providing weekly, contextualised sequences of sessions for the teaching of spelling that include open-ended investigations and opportunities to practise and apply within meaningful and purposeful contexts, linked (where relevant) to other areas of the curriculum and a suggestion of how to extend the investigation into home learning.
There is a Spelling Seed session for every week of the associated Writing Root.
address, famous, grammar, guard, potatoes, sentence
Endings which sound like /ʃən/, spelt –tion, –sion, –ssion, –cian
The suffix –ation
A Writing Root is available for The BFG.
Recount (diary entry), character descriptions, wanted posters, new chapter, instructions (recipes), letters
Own version narrative (fantasy)
15 sessions, 3 weeks
This three-week Writing Root is based on the story of The BFG by Roald Dahl. It includes exemplified grammar activities throughout, as well as including drama techniques such as thought tapping. Visual images and music are also incorporated. Specific teaching strategies are highlighted in bold and there is a glossary to explain how each of these work in a classroom situation. The children will create diary entries as Sophie and write a new chapter/own version of what might happen before creating their own giant story. The 2016 film can be used alongside the text as an additional text form or in full after session 10 but teachers will need to use the original written form first as many of the activities need children to draw upon the language that Dahl used.
On a dark, silvery moonlit night, Sophie is snatched from her bed by a giant. Luckily it is the Big Friendly Giant, the BFG, who only eats snozzcumbers and glugs frobscottle. But there are other giants in Giant Country. Fifty foot brutes who gallop far and wide every night to find human beans to eat. Can Sophie and her friend the BFG stop them? Let's hope so - otherwise the next child a gruesome giant guzzles could be YOU.
This is a classic novel by one of the world’s most famous children’s authors. Told in characteristic Roald Dahl style, this a narrative where children and the underdog champion over injustice. Children will be engaged by the witty – and sometimes entirely made-up! – language and the book will act as a springboard into the fantastical world of Roald Dahl's other titles. There are strong messages about being true to yourself, recognising that it’s ok to be different and the importance of standing up for what you believe in.
Giants, the Queen, dreams, being yourself
Date written: June 2017 Updated: December 2021
View The BFG Writing RootA Home Learning Branch is available for The BFG.
This is a Home Learning Branch for The BFG. These branches are designed to support home learners to access literature-based learning using a selection of books we love from Writing Roots. They include purposeful writing suggestions, links to the wider curriculum so that texts can be used across other subjects, key questions as well as spelling or phonics investigations.
View The BFG Home Learning Branch
KS: Lower KS2
Year Group: Year 3
KS: Upper KS2
Year Group: Year 5
