Weekend Challenge ~ Reading Comprehension

We have continued with a big focus on reading comprehension this week, the class have worked really hard to develop their questioning and answering techniques.  We have been answering questions about a 'Beach Detective' newsletter and the children understand that, when they are writing the answer to a written question, about a text, they must answer in full sentences!  To help them with this, they could underline the key words from a question that they need to use in their answer.

Please see an activity below, the extract is taken from Roald Dahl's, 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory', our current class book!  We are aiming to read the whole book in preparation for our Roald Dahl topic next term!  Children should repeatedly refer back to the text when answering the question.

'The Buckets, of course, didn't starve, but every one of them- the two old grandfathers, the two old grandmothers, Charlie's father, Charlie's mother, and especially little Charlie himself- went about from morning till night with a horrible empty feeling in their tummies.

Charlie felt it worst of all.  And although his father and mother often went without their own share of lunch or supper so that they could give it to him, it still wasn't nearly enough for a growing boy.  He desperately wanted something more filling and satisfying than cabbage and cabbage soup.  The one thing he longed for more than anything else was . . . CHOCOLATE.

Walking to school in the mornings Charlie could see great slabs of chocolate piled up high in the shop windows, and he would stop and stare and press his nose against the glass, his mouth watering like mad.  Many times a day, he would see other children taking bars of creamy chocolate out of their pockets and munching them greedily, and that, of course, was pure torture.' 

Example:

Q: How do we know Charlie and his family were very hungry?
A:  Charlie and his family are very hungry, because they go from morning till night with a horrible empty feeling in their tummies.

Questions to try at home:

1. What is Charlie's surname?
2.  Who does Charlie live with?
3. What does Charlie long for more than anything else?
4.  What makes Charlie's mouth water on the way to school?
5.  How do you think Charlie feels when he sees other children eating chocolate?