Papa and Mama, Chapter 1 of 'Boy' by Roald Dahl

In this lesson students are asked to explore how Roald Dahl describes his childhood in chapter 1 of his autobiography, Boy. It would ideal to use as part of a KS3 unit.

The lesson starts by asking students to read the preface and respond to it in pairs.

There is a group task for students to do after reading the chapter where they are given 4 questions on the board and a challenge task. All questions are linked to the GCSE reading skills AO1, 2, 3 where they have to think about language, structure and the readers’ reactions.

There are slides with the text on for teachers to annotate on a smart board as well as a map to show the area in Wales in which Dahl grew up.

The plenary asks students to discuss anecdotes about members of their own family which links to the text.

This lesson, as my other Literature lessons do, includes:

• Starter tasks which introduce the main idea of the lesson
• Handouts of extracts/text
• Differentiated tasks
• Opportunities for pair and group talk within activities (‘Talk for Writing’)