Roald Dahl Books

Two of the books I read this week were The BFG by Roald Dahl and The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl. I do use both of these books with my third graders. I so an author study in my class where each reading group is doing books by the same author. Dahl has a very wide range of reading levels among his books. The Magic Finger I use with my lower readers. It is considered a grade level 3.1 equivalent. I use The BFG with my advanced readers. It is considered a 4.8 grade level equivalent. When we get together as a class to discuss our books I like to Identify similarities and differences with the different books by the same author. We talk about the tone of the book, the style of writing, the kind of words used, and the moral of the stories. Students could even create a venn diagram to show their findings. Another activity could be using non-linguistic representations. Students could “jigsaw” read the books and then share what their book was about in a creative fashion, such as a play they act out. That way all the students in the class will have an idea about what each book was about, while only needing to read one of the books. Jigsaw is a great way to get a lot of information to students while they only need to master a small piece of the information.