SCAFFOLDING LITERACY TEACHING SEQUENCE NOTES
FOR
FANTASTIC MR FOX
Roald Dahl. 1988, Puffin Books, Penguin Books Australia Ltd. Vic
These notes are designed to guide teachers in implementing a Scaffolding Literacy Teaching Sequence based on Fantastic Mr Fox with primary school children at about National Profile level 4.
The notes do not explain all of the principles behind the activities suggested for this text. These principles are explained in the Scaffolding Literacy teaching strategy booklets. If you are starting to implement Scaffolding Literacy for the first time, or if you need more information about why and how any of the activities are done, it is essential to carefully read the relevant teaching strategy notes.
The teaching sequence notes that follow are arranged in the order of the Teaching Sequence Model below, eg:
Scaffolding Literacy Teaching Sequence1. Book Selection
Here you chose a text carefully with reference to its usefulness for literacy development. A high priority should be given to the following questions:
- What can the text teach us about litera1e language?
- How effectively can the text be incorporated as a routine focused
on literacy development. / 2
2. Book Orientation -
(a) Low Order Book Orientation
How to engage the children with the context and development of the narrative at a level of commonsense understanding
(b )High Order Book Orientation
How to engage the children specifically with the way language choices within the text build understandings and images that the author seeks to convey. / 6
3. Fluent Reading
Can the children read the text fluently? Spelling and writing strategies will not be successful until this point is reached.
4. Scaffolded Spelling
How to identify specific aspects of orthographic awareness (graphophonic/visual patterns) appropriate le the target children. How to exploit these features in scaffolding activities.
5. Text Reconstruction
How to rebuild the author's motivation, meaning frame by reconstructing the language choices in the original text. Thus, writing activity increases the level of control the children have over the language choices.
6. Text Patterning
How to extend the author's motivation, meaning frame and language choice to other contexts of situation. The writing activity here further increases both children's control over the modelled language choices and their ability to generalise those choices across other writing.
Scaffolding Literacy Teaching Sequence Notes on
Fantastic Mr Fox
1. Book Selection
The text chosen for a Scaffolding Literacy sequence will be worked on intensively over time by the whole class. It must therefore be a text that is as closely as possible appropriate for the class's year level.
Book Selection is the stage in the Scaffolding Literacy Teaching Sequence that is entirely the responsibility of class teachers. Here you choose a text carefully with reference to its usefulness for literacy development. A high priority should be given to the following questions:
-What can the text teach us about literate language?
-How effectively can the text be incorporated as a routine focused on
literacy development.
(Other notes on Book Selection are available in the Book Selection Strategy book.)
Why select Fantastic Mr Fox?
Fantastic Mr Fox is an excellent text to use with middle primary age students firstly because it is exciting and fun - children love to listen to it being read to them. Secondly, it is a rich resource for showing children how authors use particular language choices in their writing. The way Roald Dahl uses language in Fantastic Mr Fox occurs in other writing by Roald Dahl and also by many other authors. Once children understand how authors use language resources for different purposes they can start to use these resources in their own writing. In particular, the Fantastic Mr Fox can be used to show children how Roald Dahl:
- staged a narrative,
- wrote descriptions of characters that arouse positive and negative emotions
and
- wrote exciting action sequences.
Each of these points will be discussed below:
How Roald Dahl staged the narrative Fantastic Mr Fox
Fantastic Mr Fox is a good example of a narrative. It is a short novel with exciting action sequences. The Orientation, Complication, Resolution stages in the overall narrative are easily identified and discussed eg. Roald Dahl introduces each of the 'nasty and mean' farmers, Boggis, Bunce and Bean, in the first chapter. He introduces the hero, Mr Fox, his family and more of the setting in the second chapter. Then the beginning of the complication of the story - when Mr Fox has his tail shot off by the farmers - occurs in the third chapter. The rest of the story consists of a series of complications and resolutions as the farmers make attempt after attempt to kill Mr Fox and his family and Mr Fox and his family outwit them. The final resolution occurs when Mr Fox has set up a network of tunnels under each of the farms that provide him, his family and the families of other wild animals with a safe source of food. Each chapter of the book is short and pictures assist readers with understanding surface features of the story.
Descriptions of characters
In Fantastic Mr Fox, Roald Dahl describes the three farmers who are the villains of the story in a way that is intended to make the reader dislike them. He tells us who each farmer was, what he kept on his farm, what he ate and what was special (in appearance and/or behaviour) about each one. The following examples shows what Roald Dahl tells the reader about each farmer. Teachers can show children how this part of the text is organised and how Roald Dahl makes language choices. For example:
How the text is organised / Language choicesFarmer Boggis
Who was Fanner Boggis?
Boggis was a chicken farmer.
What did he keep on his farm?
He kept thousands of chickens.
What did he look like?
He was enormously fat.
Why (what did he eat)?
This was because he ate three boiled chickens smothered with dumplings everyday for breakfast, lunch and supper. / Noun groups that help the reader build mental images of Boggis:
- enormously fat
- three boiled chickens smothered
with dumplings
Farmer Bunce
Who was Farmer Bunce?
Bunce was a duck-and-goose farmer.
What did he keep on his farm?
He kept thousands of ducks and geese.
What did he look like?
He was a kind of pot-bellied dwarf
He was so short his chin would have been under water in the shallow end of any swimming-pool in the world.
What did he eat?
His food was doughnuts and goose livers. He mashed them into a disgusting paste and then stuffed the paste into the doughnuts.
How did his food cause him to behave?
This diet gave him a tummy-ache and a beastly temper. / Noun groups that help the reader build mental images of Bunce:
- a kind of pot-bellied dwarf the - shallow end of any
swimming-pool in the world a
- disgusting paste
- a beastly temper
Farmer Bean
Who was Farmer Bean?
Bean was a turkey-and-apple farmer.
What did be keep on his farm?
He kept thousands of turkeys in an orchard full of apple trees.
What did he eat?
He never ate any food at all. Instead he drank gallons of strong cider which he made from the apples in his orchard.
What special qualities did he have?
He was as thin as a pencil and the cleverest of them all. / Noun groups that help the reader build mental images of Bean:
- gallons of strong cider, which he made from the apples in his orchard
- thin as a pencil
- the cleverest of them all
As the story progresses teachers can show their class how Roald Dahl intensifies the readers' dislike of each farmer by adding details of their behaviour in character with each one, eg:
In Chapter 2 Roald Dahl doesn't just tell the reader that Bean said, "I have a plan." He tells the reader something disgusting Bean was doing as he spoke:
Bean picked his nose delicately with a long finger. 'I have a plan,’ he said.
Again in Chapter 5 Roald Dahl doesn't just write
"What?" said Bean. "I can't hear you."
He adds a disgusting reason for Bean's deafness,
"What?" said Bean. "I can't hear you."
Bean never took a bath. He never even washed.
As a result, his earholes were clogged with all kinds of muck and wax
and bits of chewing-gum and dead flies and stuff like that.
This made him deaf.
Roald Dahl also continues to use noun groups to describe each farmer which are consistent with the initial description of each one, eg.
Bunce, the little pot-bellied dwarf,
The tiny Bunce,
The long thin Bean
The fat Boggis
Exciting action sequences
There are several exciting action sequences in Fantastic Mr Fox that can be used to show children how Roald Dahl made his writing exciting. He does this in a number of ways that build exact images in the readers' mind (the examples below are from pp 23, 24 of Chapter 3).
He uses precise language choices:
- to describe actions, eg. crept, twitched, flattened, explode, floated.
- to describe things, ego his long handsome face, the dark tunnel, a tiny
noise, a soft rustling sound, as though someone had moved a foot ever so
gently through a patch of dry leaves, his sharp night-eyes, a small silver
speck of moonlight shining on a polished surface, poor tattered bloodstained
remains of ... a fox's tail.
- to tell how, when, where and why something happened, eg. especially,
gently, quick as a whip, at that same instant, in the circle of light, half in half
out of the hole.
He describes an action in careful detail expanding on the reason for the actions, what the character was thinking or saying or adding more information. Eg.
Mr Fox crept up the dark tunnel to the mouth of his hole.
He poked his long handsome face out into the night air and sniffed once.
He moved an inch or two forward and stopped.
He sniffed again.
He was always especially careful when coming out from his hole.
He inched forward a little more.
The front half of his body was now in the open.
His black nose twitched from side to side,
sniffing and sniffing for the scent of danger.
He found none,
and he was just about to go trotting forward into the wood
when he heard or thought he heard a tiny noise, a soft rustling sound,
as though someone had moved a foot ever so gently through a patch of dry leaves.
Mr Fox flattened his body against the
ground and lay very still, his ears pricked.
He waited a long time,
but he heard nothing more.
"It must have been a field-mouse," he told himself,
"or some other small animal."
He crept a little further out of the hole…
Then further still.
He was almost right out in the open now.
He took a last careful look around.
The wood was murky and very still.
Somewhere in the sky the moon was shining.
Just then, his sharp night-eyes caught a glint of something bright behind a tree not far away.
It was a small silver speck of moonlight shining on a polished surface.
Mr Fox lay still,
watching it.
What on earth was it?
Now it was moving.
It was coming up and up…
Great heavens! It was the barrel of a gun!
2. Book Orientation
The Book Orientation used in the Scaffolding Literacy Teaching Sequence consists of Low Order Book Orientation and High Order Book Orientation. Low Order Book Orientation is discussed first in the notes below.
- Low Order Book Orientation engages the children with the context and development of the narrative at a level of commonsense understanding. On this book Low Order Book Orientation consists of giving an overview of whole story, then of each chapter followed by a discussion about any pictures in the text. Children are then able to listen to the story with understanding and enjoyment. Following Low Order Book Orientation on each chapter read that section to of the text to the class. It is important to remember that teachers will go through the Low Order Book Orientation and will read the text to the class many times. This revisiting of the discussion about the story allows the children to take control of the information originally provided by the teacher.
Above: Teacher and children are engaged in a Low Order Book Orientation session
How to do Low Order Book Orientation on Fantastic Mr Fox
As this book has some pictures, Low Order Book Orientation will involve tuning the children in to the significance of what they are hearing as you read the whole book to them. At the same time as you are doing Low Order Book Orientation on parts of the text and are reading the book to the class you _ can also be doing High Order Book Orientation on other parts of the text, ego you could be reading Chapter 4 to the class but also be doing High Order Book Orientation on parts of Chapter 1.
The following Low Order Book Orientation notes are set out chapter by chapter. This will allow teachers to read the story to the children in a way that engages them with the significant events and characters in the text. Once you have read Chapter 1 to the class and have started Chapter 2 you can then start High Order Book Orientation on Chapter 1 eg.
Establish routines for working on the textLesson 1 / Lesson 1 I Low Order Book Orientation on Chapter 1.
Read Chapter 1 to Class.
Lesson 2 / Revisit Low Order Book Orientation on Chapter 1 with class.
Low Order Book Orientation on Chapter 2.
Read Chapter 2 to class.
Lesson 3 / Revisit Low Order Book Orientation on Chapter 1 and 2 with class to distribute and extend common knowledge (by now children will be able to tell you much of what is going on in Chapter 1).
Begin High Order Book Orientation on the description of the three farmers in Chapter 1.
Low Order Book Orientation on Chapter 3.
Read Chapter 3 to class.
Lesson 4 / Revisit High Order Book Orientation on Chapter 1 with class to distribute and extend common knowledge (children will be controlling more of the discussion).
Transformations on description of Boggis.
Spelling from Transformations (chunking of individual words as well as 'easy’ spelling).
Revisit Low Order Book Orientation on Chapter 2 and 3.
Low Order Book Orientation on Chapter 4.
Read Chapter 4 to class.
Lesson 5 / Revisit High Order Book Orientation on Chapter 1, allowing the children to contribute as much as they are able. Add more information where appropriate (reconceptualise).
Revisit Transformations on Boggis and start Transformations on the description of Bunce).
Spelling on Transformations.
Revisit Low Order Book Orientation on Chapter 3 and 4.
Low Order Book Orientation on Chapter 5
Continue, as above, until you have read the whole of Fantastic Mr Fox to the class.