The Purpose of the Activity Is To

Instructions

Teacher reads out the bingonumber and theopenings extract twice.
Teacher jots down the bingo number on the bingo caller card.
Pupils look for an appropriate description of that type of opening on their bingo cards. If it is on their card, they write the number of the extract in the appropriate square.
Repeat until a pupil has completed a full line.

The purpose of the activity is to:

a)Explore openings

b)Encourage thinking about the impact of different openings

c)Encourage pupils to think from different perspectives

d)Develop talking and listening skills

In using this activity, the learning happens through the discussion. There are a number of ways you could structure the talk to ensure that all pupils take part and that they are all able to develop their understanding of story openings.

Whole Class Discussion

Once the game is over, discuss the answers of the pupil who had the full line with the whole class. Some of the openings provided will fit into more than one category, so if the pupils’ responses are not the same as the suggested idea in the teachers’ notes, they may still be valid. The questions below may be helpful in ensuring higher order thinking.

Paired/Small Group Work

You could allocate one opening each to small groups and have them respond to the questions below, and report back to another group/whole class.

Individual Work

You could allocate a different opening to each pupil. Give time for them to study their opening, identify its advantages/disadvantages, including the target age/gender/genre. When pupils have considered their opening, they then travel around the room, reading their opening to a partner, discussing it and ticking it off on their own bingo card. This is a version of ‘Each One, Teach One’ (Active Learning and Teaching Strategies booklet).

You could limit the number of different opening types you work with at any time, to make the task more manageable and the learning more targeted.

Questions that may be useful for this activity:

Which opening type is it? How do you know?
Did anybody have a different opening type for that one?
How does that opening impact on the reader?
What type of book do you think it might be from?
How do you think the book might end?
Who might read this book?

Other ways of using these openings:

Ranking activities

For example, you could print out and laminate a set for pupils to use for ranking activities, e.g. rank the openings from the most appealing to the least appealing. Share with a partner and discuss. Challenge them to come up with a joint ranking. With any ranking activity, the rank order they settle on is often less important than the process of the discussion that led to the agreed order.

Genre game

You could play a genre game, where pupils have genres printed and laminated. You call out an opening and the pupils 'vote' for the genre they think the novel it belongs to is most likely to be. Again, the discussion around the clues they are using to reach the decision makes them more aware of the written text as a construct, and helps them to focus on the decisions that other writers make. This will then have an impact on their own decision-making as writers.

“Copy the great writers until you can write no other way”

Remind the pupils that the point of looking at these openings is so that they will copy them and use similar openings in their own work.

Why not give them some of the openings, and allow them to copy the sentence structures used in some of the examples, but changing the details?

Openings descriptions

These story openings descriptions are listed in the preparedbingo cards:

Once upon a time…
Raises questions in the reader’s mind
Immediate insight into character
Humour (making the reader laugh)
Universal statement (thought-provoking generalisation)
Mid-action opening
Presents an unusual situation (Surprises the reader)
Retrospective view of the action (narrative voice is looking back over the action of the plot with hindsight)
Creates an atmosphere (for the story)
Detailed description of one item
Directly addresses the reader
Literary or cultural allusion
Biographical opening (introduction of the character)
Interesting dialogue
Shocking statement
Understatement

Story Openings Extracts

No / Extract / Novel and Writer
1 / September, Tuesday: First of all, let me get something straight: this is a JOURNAL, not a diary. I know what it says on the cover, but when Mom went out to buy this thing I SPECIFICALLY told her to get one that didn’t say “diary” on it. / Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Jeff Kinney
2 / Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have a million pounds? Or a billion? How about a trillion? Or even a gazillion? Meet Joe Spud. / Billionaire Boy
David Walliams
3 / Ho Chi Minh City in the summer. Sweltering by anyone’s standards. Needless to say, Artemis Fowl would not be willing to put up with such discomfort if something extremely important had not been at stake. Important to the plan. / Artemis Fowl
Eoin Colfer
4 / ‘I don’t care if your friend Darren has a python, a cockatoo and a marmoset monkey,’ said mum, ‘the answer’s still no.’ / Jake’s Magic
Alan Durant
5 / It should be made clear from the start that Blart never wanted to be a hero. He had not been brought up on tales of bravery and courage in the face of overwhelming odds; he had been brought up on a pig farm. He had not read the myths and legends of the dim distant past where noble men and women gloriously chanced all for others; he had read his grandfather’s books which were mainly about diseases that pigs got. He had not learnt to ride a horse or to sword fight or to risk his life for the honour of a beautiful woman. He had learnt that if you want to catch a pig you sneak up on it from behind and take it by surprise. / Blart: The Boy Who Didn’t Want to Save the World
Dominic Barker
6 / ‘Honestly, Mrs Hadley,’ said Meggie McGregor, wiping her eyes. ‘That sense of humour of yours will be the death of me yet!’
Jasmine Hadley allowed herself a rare giggle. ‘The things I tell you, Meggie. It’s lucky we’re such good friends!’
Meggie’s smile wavered only slightly. She looked out across the vast lawn at Callum and Sephy. Her son and her employer’s daughter. They were good friends playing together. Real good friends. No barriers. No boundaries. Not yet anyway. It was a typical summer’s day, light and bright and, in the Hadley household anyway, not a cloud in their sky. / Noughts & Crosses
Malorie Blackman
7 / The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. / Murphy
Samuel Beckett
8 / Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy name baby tuckoo. / A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce
9 / The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. / Babbitt
Sinclair Lewis
10 / I am afraid.
Someone is coming.
That is, I think someone is coming, though I am not sure, and I pray that I am wrong. / Z for Zachariah
Robert C O’Brien
11 / A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead. / The End of the Affair
Graham Greene
12 / Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. / Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy
13 / It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. / 1984
George Orwell
14 / In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. Whenever you feel like criticising anyone, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had. / The Great Gatsby
F Scott Fitzgerald
15 / In the dark pit that had been my prison for almost three hundred and fifty years, Steadman’s latest victim was regaining consciousness. / Crawlers
Sam Enthoven
16 / In her nightmares, Alice looked into the magic mirror and watched the steamship burn all over again. / The Palace of Glass
Django Wexler
17 / When you wish that a Saturday was actually a Monday, you know there is something seriously wrong. / Boy in the Tower
Polly Ho-Yen
18 / Laura's baby brother George was four weeks old when it happened. / George Speaks
Dick King-Smith
19 / Our last moments of freedom,' Lloyd said darkly. He glowered round the battered walls of the playroom, at the motorbike posters peeling off the wallpaper and Harvey's model aeroplanes neatly ranged on top of the bookcase. 'She'll be sticking up pictures of flowers and ballet dancers when she comes I bet.' / The Demon Headmaster
Gillian Cross
20 / It’s a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful. / Matilda
Roald Dahl
21 / Oh, Lizzie, do you believe how absolutely horrendous I look today! / Sweet Valley High:
Double Love
Francine Pascal
22 / I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. / I Capture the Castle
Dodie Smith
23 / In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines lived twelve little girls in two straight lines. / Madeline
Ludwig Bemelmans
24 / If, standing alone on the back doorstep, Tom allowed himself to weep tears, they were tears of anger. / Tom's Midnight Garden
Philippa Pearce
25 / You don't know about me without you have read a book called 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,' but that ain't no matter. / The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain
26 / July had been blown out like a candle by a biting wind that ushered in a leaden August sky. / My Family and Other Animals
Gerald Durrell
27 / If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. / The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
28 / When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. / The Secret Garden
Frances Hodgson Burnett
29 / When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton. / The Fellowship of the Ring
J.R.R. Tolkien
30 / There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. / The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
C.S.Lewis
31 / My name is Tracy Beaker. I am 10 years 2 months old. My birthday is on May 8. It's not fair, because that dopey Peter Ingham has his birthday then too, so we just got the one cake between us. And we had to hold the knife to cut the cake together. Which meant we only had half a wish each. Wishing is for babies anyway. Wishes don't come true. / The Story of Tracy Beaker
Jacqueline Wilson
32 / Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen. / The Golden Compass
Philip Pullman
33 / It was Mrs. May who first told me about them. / The Borrowers
Mary Norton
34 / Johnny never knew for certain why he started seeing the dead. / Johnny and the Dead
Terry Pratchett
35 / It was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips. / The Jungle Book
Rudyard Kipling
36 / It was seven minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears' house. Its eyes were closed. / The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Mark Haddon
37 / Everybody knows the story of the Three Little Pigs. Or at least they think they do. But I'll let you in on a little secret. Nobody knows the real story, because nobody has ever heard my side of the story. I'm the Wolf. / The true Story of the 3 Little Pigs (by A. Wolf)
As told to Jon Scieszka
38 / Marley was dead, to begin with. / A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens
39 / Kidnapping children is never a good idea; all the same, sometimes it has to be done. / Island of the Aunts
Eva Ibbotson
40 / Down in the valley there were three farms. The owners of these farms had done well. They were rich men. They were also nasty men. All three of them were about as nasty and mean as any men you could meet. Their names were Farmer Boggis, Farmer Bunce and Farmer Bean. / Fantastic Mr Fox
Roald Dahl
41 / It was so glorious out in the country; it was summer; the cornfields were yellow, the oats were green, the hay had been put up in stacks in the green meadows, and the stork went about on his long red legs, and chattered Egyptian, for this was the language he had learned from his good mother. / The Ugly Duckling
Hans Christian Anderson
42 / Once upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names were - Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, and Peter. / The Tale of Peter Rabbit
Beatrix Potter
43 / "Where's Papa going with that axe?" said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast. / Charlotte's Web
E.B. White
44 / Once on a dark winter's day, when the yellow fog hung so thick and heavy in the streets of London that the lamps were lighted and the shop windows blazed with gas as they do at night, an odd-looking little girl sat in a cab with her father and was driven rather slowly through the big thoroughfares. / A little Princess
Frances Hodgson Burnett
45 / The Iron Man came to the top of the cliff. How far had he walked? Nobody knows. Where had he come from? Nobody knows. Taller than a house, the Iron Man stood at the top of the cliff, on the very brink, in the darkness. / The Iron Man
Ted Hughes
46 / The first place that I can remember well was a large pleasant meadow with a pond of clear water in it. / Black Beauty
Anna Sewell
47 / Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. / Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
J.K. Rowling
48 / Most motorcars are conglomerations (this is a long word for bundles) of steel and wire and rubber and plastic, and electricity and oil and gasoline and water, and the toffee papers you pushed down the crack in the back seat last Sunday. / Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Ian Fleming
49 / All children, except one, grow up. / Peter Pan
J.M. Barrie
50 / Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood. / Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief
Rick Riordan

Bingo caller’s card / Mid-action opening / Literary or cultural allusion
Universal statement / Directly addressesthe reader
Humour / Detailed descriptionof oneitem / Understatement
Immediate insightinto character / Creates an atmosphere / Shocking statement
Raises questions inthereader’s mind / Retrospective view of the action / Interesting dialogue
Once upon a time… / Presents an unusual situation / Biographical opening

Story openings bingo
Once upon a time… / Immediate insight into character / Retrospective view of
the action
Universal statement / Interesting dialogue / Shocking statement
Creates an atmosphere / Humour / Literary or culturalallusion