Текст книги "The London Eye Mystery"
Автор книги: Siobhan Dowd
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Review and reflect
Once they have completed their profiles, invite students to share them with the class. Consider what we as readers already know about Ted, and how this may help him solve Salim’s disappearance later in the novel.
Homework
Challenge students to write a similar social networking profile for either Kat or Salim, using the evidence they have found in the novel so far. They can add to this information as the book progresses.
Worksheet 3a
Non-verbal language
I am very cold.
My tooth hurts.
Where is my book?
I need to go to
the toilet.
Can you scratch
my back?
What time is it?
There’s a spider on your shoulder!
I am feeling
very tired.
I’ve cut my finger.
I need help lifting this chair.
I love you.
Could you lend me some money?
I’m bored.
I’ve forgotten my glasses.
Can I borrow your pencil?
I win!
Worksheet 3b
Fact File: Asperger’s Syndrome
Asperger’s Syndrome is a condition which affects a person’s ability to interact with others.
People with Asperger’s:
usually follow repetitive patterns of behaviour and interests
may seem obsessed with one subject and gather a lot of information on that subject
often struggle to know how to start or end a conversation
may talk at length about a subject that doesn’t appear to interest their listener
may struggle to make friends
tend to use language literally
struggle to understand the feelings of others or to recognize their reactions
can have difficulty with non-verbal communication like eye contact, facial expression, posture and gesture
often seem awkward in social situations.
A person with Asperger’s Syndrome may understand the emotions of others in a theoretical way, but may struggle to act on this understanding in real life. This can make them seem insensitive.
LESSON 4
Focus:Chapters 6–8
Narrative structure/Building suspense
Learning outcomes
Students will be able to:
Skim and scan text to retrieve information
Identify the structure and organization of text
Identify how the narrator develops character, creates suspense and moves the plot forward
Engage
Ask whether any of the students have been on the London Eye. If they have, invite them to share their experiences, and ask the class what they know about the Eye.
Distribute the Reading Guide. On page 10, students will find a fun match-up activity on the London Eye. Working in pairs or small groups, they should try to match up each of the questions with the right answers (if possible, allow them Internet access to research their answers or print out information from the website, although answers can also be found through a process of deduction). Give them a time limit to do this.
Answers: 1d; 2e; 3j; 4h; 5f; 6c; 7b; 8i (this figure may have changed since publication); 9g; 10a.
Explore
Explain to students that the chapters they will be looking at today are those in which Salim’s disappearance takes place on the London Eye. This is a key moment in the novel. How do they think an author might write a scene such as this one? Remind them that authors use writing techniques to retain a reader’s interest, in particular by building up tension and suspense.
As a class, compile a list of the ways that a writer might build up tension and suspense in a scene. These could include:
powerful descriptive or emotive words and images to bring the image to life for the reader
sentence variation to create fast or slow pace
punctuation that helps speed up or slow down the reading
holding back information from the reader.
Then ask students to consider how having Ted as a narrator may have presented a problem for Siobhan Dowd in creating an atmosphere of suspense in these chapters. For example, Ted does not use much figurative language, so his descriptions are quite straightforward. He also says what he sees, and does not seem to hold back information from the reader.
Read Chapters 6–8.
Transform
Once students have read the chapters, ask them whether they felt that Siobhan Dowd was able to create a tense atmosphere in the scenes, despite having Ted as the narrator. What key device does she use? Elicit that the author has chosen to begin the novel in Chapter 1 at the moment of crisis. Before reading Chapters 6–8, we already know that Salim has disappeared without explanation, so we are already curious and eager for clues to the mystery as we read Ted’s description, and we know more than the characters do at this point. This means that the tension level is high before the chapters even begin.
Ask students to track tension in the three chapters on the graph on WS 4. As they do so, they should consider whether the writer uses any other devices to build and maintain tension (for example, the times the children almost turn back from boarding the Eye, the mysterious stranger, the bad feeling Ted gets).
Review and reflect
Display the graph in WS 4as an OHT. Take feedback from the class and add moments of tension and tension levels to it as you go. Do students think the choices made by Siobhan Dowd work effectively to build suspense?
Homework
Students could make their own attempt at writing a story which opens with the moment of crisis. For example, a short ghost story which opens:
I was thirteen years and thirteen days old when the haunting began. It started as a normal day…
Worksheet 4
Tension tracker
To keep a reader’s interest and create an atmosphere of suspense, a writer will use a range of techniques to build tension in their writing. Choose five (or more) key moments in Chapters 6–8 of The London Eye Mystery, and track the level of tension at each of these moments. Remember to track the tension level at the start of the chapter as well.
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LESSON 5
Focus:Chapters 9–11
Summarizing information
Learning outcomes
Students will be able to:
Skim and scan text to retrieve information
Infer information from the text about characters and events
Summarize information using notes
Write a report
Engage
Read Chapters 9–11.
Explain to students that, in a situation like the one described in these chapters, the police officers who visit Ted’s family would be required to write a report and that later in this lesson they will be writing this report themselves. Ask the class to think about what the features of a police report might be, for example:
written in the third person
written in formal language
uses factual writing instead of opinions
is clear and precise
uses the present tense to describe how things are, and the past tense to describe events
structured and presented clearly.
Revise any of these aspects of language as necessary.
Explore
In Chapter 11, Ted says that while the plain clothes detective asks questions, her colleague the detective sergeant takes notes. Ask students why this would be a useful thing to do. Elicit:
to ensure nothing is forgotten
to write down exact words said by witnesses
to keep all information in one place
to write down impressions (‘hunches’) that may not be included in the final report, but may be useful during the investigation
to note down questions for later, or for other witnesses
to organize thoughts before writing them down formally.
Explain that in preparation for writing their own reports, students will be preparing notes based on Ted’s account of the interviews in Chapter 11. You could ask them to do this themselves, or provide scaffolding in the form of WS 5a.
Once they have completed the notes, ask the class to consider what sort of questions the police might have asked Aunt Gloria once Ted, Kat and their father were asked to leave the room. What other information might they have found out that we as readers already know? (For example, that Salim had not wanted to leave his friends.) Students can add this information to their notes.
Transform
Tell students that they are now going to turn the policeman’s notes into a report on Salim’s disappearance. They will need to use the novel to find any missing information (they can make up basic information not provided, such as the uniformed officer’s name), and separate facts from opinions. They will also need to leave out any information that Ted and Kat have not told the police, for example, that they have Salim’s camera, or information we do not yet know.
They can then complete the report independently using WS 5b. Students should leave the final section (further leads for follow up) blank for now.
Review and reflect
Ask students to work in pairs to look over each other’s reports and comment on one thing that their partner has done well, and one thing that could be improved.
They should then discuss with their partner what the police should look at next. What leads should they investigate? Is there anyone they should interview? How else could they find out more about what has happened to Salim? Pairs can fill in the last section of their police reports using this information, and then share this with the class.
Homework
Students investigate a famous disappearance (this could be either Lord Lucan or the Marie Celesteas referenced in Chapter 9 or a mystery of their own choosing). They should write notes as they research the disappearance and could be asked to turn this into a report as an extended assignment, using the features of reports discussed earlier in the lesson.
Worksheet 5a
Police notes
Notes from visit to Spark family home
Present at interview: Gloria (missing person’s mother)
Reason for visit to London:
Belongings (contents of backpack from scene of disappearance):
Witnesses’ account of disappearance:
Other:
Worksheet 5b
Police report
LESSON 6
Focus:Chapters 12–15
Character development
Learning outcomes
Students will be able to:
Infer and deduce information from the text
Empathize with characters and explore their development
Act in role as one of the characters
Engage
This lesson gives students another chance to act as reading detectives.
Read Chapter 12 with the class, focusing on Ted’s five point code for reading faces. Because of his Asperger’s Syndrome, which makes Ted struggle to understand non-verbal communication, he uses this code to deducethe feelings of others. Remind students of the active reading strategies: infer and deduce. We deduce information from the evidence we find in a text (for example, if someone puts on a raincoat, we might deduce that it is raining outside). We make an inference by reading between the lines and guessing that something is probably true, based on what we know (in this case, we might infer that the person was prepared for bad weather).
Why are these strategies particularly important in this story? Elicit that, as a narrator, Ted is very literal, but that using inference and deduction, we are able to understand a lot more about what the other characters think and feel than Ted actually tells us. We get most of this information from what the characters do and sometimes what they say about one another (as documented by Ted). This device forces the reader to act as a reading detective (a concept they will be familiar with from earlier lessons) throughout the book, and adds to the engagement of the writing and the sense of The London Eye Mysteryas a modern whodunnit.
Ask students to suggest what they have already deduced and inferred about Aunt Gloria, Kat and Salim from their reading of the novel (if possible, they should provide textual evidence). Draw three spider diagrams on the board and add their suggestions to it.
Explore
Students will now take on a quick guided reading session ( WS 6aprovides guidance for this). It will probably be useful to divide them into groups, and to assign each a different chapter (Chapters 13, 14 or 15). Ensure each group has a copy of WS 6b.
At the end of the session, groups report back with a short summary of the chapter they have read, as well as information on what they have learned about the characters. Where relevant, add this information to the spider diagrams from earlier in the lesson.
Transform
Students will now perform a hot-seating activity, where they will take it in turns to perform the parts of Salim, Kat and Aunt Gloria while the rest of the class asks them questions. For Salim, they should answer questions at the point in the story where he is ready to board the London Eye, since we do not know what has happened to him subsequently. The students acting as Kat and Aunt Gloria can perform these roles from the end of Chapter 15, where the body has been found that is not Salim’s.
Model the activity by inviting students to ask you questions as one of the characters, and then hand over the hot seat to one of the students.
Review and reflect
Ask students to reflect on what they have discovered about Salim’s disappearance and the characters in the novel so far. What do they think will happen next?
Look over Ted’s theories. How likely or unlikely do students feel that each of the theories are? Do they have another theory about what happened to Salim? Remind them of Sherlock Holmes’s maxim: ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’
Homework
Ask students to go back to the social networking profiles they created in Lesson 3 and update them with the information they now have on each character.
Worksheet 6a
Guided reading plan: Lesson 6
Teaching intention
To consolidate inference and deduction.
To stimulate questioning as a strategy to increase engagement.
To support the students in making predictions.
Introduction
Divide students into groups and assign them one of the three chapters (13, 14 or 15). Inform them that they will be looking closely at the text for clues about the other characters in the novel, specifically Aunt Gloria, Kat and Salim (although they will also be able to infer knowledge about Ted and his father, for example). Hand out WS6bto each group and tell them that they will be using the worksheet to document their findings.
Strategy check
Check that students fully understand the terms ‘infer’ and ‘deduce’.
Check that students have a good knowledge of the events up until this point, and of the main characters in the novel.
Check that students understand the task. They will need to read their chapter before going on to discuss as a group what they can deduce and infer from the chapter and use this to complete the worksheet.
Independent reading
Students read their assigned chapters (13, 14 or 15) of The London Eye Mystery.
Return to the text
Students discuss the examples they have added to their worksheet and agree what each tells us about a particular character or the situation in general. They then come up with at least one of their own examples.
Review
Ask each group to report back to the class, both with a summary of the chapter they have read, and with their findings. Add the information uncovered about Kat, Aunt Gloria and Salim to the spider diagrams created during the starter activity (or draw new ones).
Worksheet 6b
Infer and deduce: Chapters 13–15
Clue from the text
What this tells us
LESSON 7
Focus:Chapters 16–19
Setting
Learning outcomes
Students will be able to:
Explore the setting of the novel and how this contributes to plot development
Use persuasive language and presentational features
Present their ideas
Engage
On the whiteboard, display a number of images of tourist London. If relevant, ask students who has visited London and what their impressions were. You could also ask them to complete the silhouette activity on page 11 of the Reading Guide.
Remind students of the importance of setting in every novel. Siobhan Dowd was born in London, but the rest of her books were set in Ireland, where her family had their roots. Of the four she wrote, only this one is focused on her birthplace. Why might Dowd have chosen London as an appropriate setting to help her tell Ted’s story? Students should consider the atmosphere of London, as well as the practical possibilities of having a character lost in a major city.
Explore
Of course, the other main reason Siobhan Dowd would have set The London Eye Mysteryin London is because of the London Eye itself. This iconic landmark is an ideal setting for Salim’s disappearance because it is so well known and also provides all the elements of the locked room mystery mentioned in Lesson 1.
Tell students that they will be working in teams to create a poster advertising the London Eye. Hand out copies of WS 7ato each team, which provides a detailed brief and explanation.
First, groups should discuss the audience they will be aiming their poster at, and what might appeal to this audience. They should also decide where the posters will be displayed. They will then need to come up with a catchy slogan for their posters. (As a fun activity to revise the importance of slogans, ask the teams to compete in completing the quiz on WS 7b.)
Transform
Once they have decided on a slogan, students can start to design their posters. They will need to consider presentational features like font, image and placement as well as the content of their poster (interesting facts, persuasive language, details like price, timing and location). Remind them that they are writing with a specific audience in mind, and where their posters will be displayed will also have an impact on what they produce (for example, a tube advert could not work with large sections of unreadable text).
When the posters are complete, each team has the opportunity to present their idea and design. They will need to explain why they have chosen what they have, and how it will best sell the London Eye to their audience. Once all teams have presented their posters, the class could vote on which ‘campaign’ should be presented to the ‘client’.
Review and reflect
Ask students to think again about what they have learnt about London, and the Eye, and how these are appealing for a tourist as well as a reader. Return to the question of why this was chosen as the setting. Are there any other places Siobhan Dowd could have chosen, both within London or elsewhere? If they were writing a mystery story set in their own hometown, where would it take place?
Homework
Students read Chapters 16–19.
Worksheet 7a
Advertising campaign brief
Dear Team,
We have been asked by our new clients, the London Tourism Board, to create a campaign advertising the London Eye. This campaign could eventually include radio and television advertising as well as a series of newspaper adverts, but our first task will be to produce a poster. These are important clients, and it is important that we impress them with our first effort! To ensure we only present our best work, you will be divided into teams, and each team will design a poster and pitch your idea to everyone, with the best poster going forward to the client.
Before designing your poster, you will need to consider:
which audience you will be aiming the campaign at
where the posters will be found
what you think is the most important or interesting feature of the London Eye to persuade your chosen audience to visit it.
Your poster must include:
a memorable slogan or catch-phrase
price, timing and location
an attention-grabbing image.
It could also include:
facts to impress tourists
quotations from passengers.
Be creative and good luck!
Worksheet 7b
Famous slogans quiz
Do you recognize these famous advertising slogans? Fill in the names of the products they advertise below!
Because you’re worth it.
Taste the rainbow.
I’m lovin’ it.
Should’ve gone to …
Just do it.
Have a break. Have a …
Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s…
The world’s local bank.
It gives you wings.
Every little helps.
LESSON 8
Focus:Chapters 20–23
Perspective
Learning outcomes
Students will be able to:
Explore the theme of perspective in the novel and how it contributes to the development of the plot
Skim and scan the text to locate evidence
Empathize with characters
Engage
Show students OHT 8, which is an example of an optical illusion. Ask students what they see. Some will see a duck, while others will see a rabbit. Show them that the drawing is of both of these creatures, depending on which way you look at it. Introduce the term ‘perspective’.
Then draw on the board Ted’s version of an egg from page 161 of the novel (i.e. three rings, one for the shell, one for the white and another for the egg yolk). Again, ask students to guess what it is. When you have come to the right answer, read Chapters 20–23.
Explore
Tell students that perspective is an important theme in The London Eye Mystery. As the novel progresses, Ted realizes that objects, people and situations can look different from different locations, or from the point of view of different characters. For example, when he is in the London Eye pod in Chapter 17, he tries to imagine the trip from Salim’s perspective on the day he disappeared.
In pairs, students work to find as many examples of perspective in Chapter 20 as they can. These could include:
‘Salim or not Salim’: Until the boy’s body is identified, he becomes Salim in the minds of the family, but once they know who he is, his ‘identity’ changes.
cyclones and anti-cyclones
water going down a plug hole
direction of London Eye
glass half empty/half full
nemotodes, such as earthworms
Kat’s waterfall picture
Can they think of any more examples from the real world?
Transform
Explain to the class that in a novel, perspective is also very important when understanding that an event may be narrated by one character, but experienced differently by other characters. Refer them to Chapter 3, where Ted and Kat remember Aunt Gloria’s letter completely differently.
Remind students of the photographs Ted and Kat look at in these chapters. Explain that every photograph is taken from the perspective of the person who takes it – where they are standing and what is interesting and important to them. This is why Ted’s photographs look so different to everyone else’s – because he has a different way of looking at the world.
Then, working in groups, students create one or more ‘photographs’ – tableaux of Salim’s disappearance from the perspective of the different characters in the novel. You could demonstrate Ted’s point of view yourself, with the help of a few students, as this is a perspective we are already familiar with. But how would Kat remember it? How did Salim see the scene, the moment he got into the capsule? How does Aunt Gloria or Mr Spark remember it, since they were not actually on the scene? Encourage students to be creative.
Groups then perform their tableaux. While they are frozen, invite other students to walk around the scene and look at it from different viewpoints. Is there anything that they see differently?
Review and reflect
Students should now have a good grasp of perspective. Tell them that the ability to see a case from different perspectives as well as the whole picture (Ted’s bird’s eye view) is also an important trait of a good reading detective. Discuss how, in a novel, the reader not only has to understand the narrator’s perspective, but to interpret the views of other characters through their actions and speech, to gain a bird’s eye view of the plot.
Homework
Students could write a diary entry from the point of view of any character other than Ted.
OHT 8
What do you see?
LESSON 9
Focus:Chapters 24–32
Plot development
Learning outcomes
Students will be able to:
Work as part of a group to solve a problem
Consider how the same story might be presented and told in different media
Use purpose and audience to focus their ideas
Engage
Remind students of Chapter 20, and how Ted and Kat are trying to decipher the words on the strange man’s shirt. Ted sees this as a kind of word game. Hand out WS9, which has a number of similar word games, and ask students to work in groups to try to figure them out. How many can they solve?
Answers: 1. small talk; 2. tongue in cheek; 3. weather forecast; 4. round of applause; 5. top secret; 6. I understand; 7. three blind mice (no i’s/eyes); 8. summary
Explore
Read Chapters 24 and 25 as a class. In these chapters, Ted solves the mystery on the T-shirt and the television crew also arrive at the Spark household to film Salim’s parents.
Tell the class that the job of a journalist can be similar to that of a detective. Journalists also need to be able to take a collection of information and build a bird’s eye view of it as a whole, and then present this to their readers.
Ask students to think of the different kinds of journalism that they have encountered. For example:
newspapers and tabloids
radio
television news
online.
How do these different types of news reporting differ? Compile a list of the features of each, reminding students to think about purpose and audience.
Then ask the class to consider how the different media might report the story of Salim’s disappearance. For example, a newspaper report might focus on the fact that a young boy had gone missing, while a tabloid might focus on the mystery of the London Eye, or the fact that his parents had not been with him at the time. A television report may give the most time to the statement by Salim’s parents. Students should try to come up with as many different ‘angles’ on the story as they can.
Transform
Students will now work in groups to prepare one of three news reports on Salim’s disappearance (alternatively you could choose one of these conventions for the whole class to work with).
Group 1: Students write a traditional news report. They will need to include: a title summing up the story; the 5Ws (who, what, where, when, why); short quotations from the police or from Salim’s parents’ statement; paragraphs organized cohesively; clear, informative writing; formal language.
Group 2: Students perform a news broadcast (this combines the skills of reporting and drama). They could write this as a script, including a report for the student/s acting as news anchor to read, while other members of the group act out scenes such as the parents’ statement. As with the newspaper report, they will need to answer the 5Ws, and the story should be clear and cohesive.
Group 3: Students write a tabloid news story. They will need to include: a sensationalist headline; the 5Ws; biased and emotive language; images; less formal language. Remind students that the purpose here is to entertain as well as inform readers.
Review and reflect
Tell students they are nearing a point in the novel where they will discover the answers to the mystery. What do they think happened to Salim? You could go back to Ted’s eight theories and evaluate these again, or ask students to come up with their own theories, based on what they have learned.
Homework
Independent reading of Chapters 26–32.
Worksheet 9
Word games
talk
CHETONGUEEK
1. ______________________________
2. ______________________________
CAST
CAST
WEATHER CAST
CAST
3. ______________________________
4. ______________________________
Secret
Secret
Secret
Secret
Secret
STAND
____________
I
5. ______________________________
6. ______________________________
M CE
M CE
M CE
MARY
+MARY
_______
_______
7. ______________________________
8. ______________________________
LESSON 10
Focus:Chapters 33–37
Themes/Plot pivot
Learning outcomes
Students will be able to:
Retrieve and consider ideas from the text about key themes in the story
Explore structural devices used by the author
Infer information from the text about characters and events
Engage
Remind students of the lesson on idiomatic language (Lesson 2), and how this is something Ted struggles to understand. WS 10aprovides a fun card activity for students to match weather idioms with their meanings. Once the activity is complete, encourage students to use the phrases in context/sentences.
Explore
Explain that weather is something that comes into The London Eye Mysteryfrequently, because Ted is the narrator and he has an obsession with weather. Sometimes he uses idiomatic expressions to describe how he or other characters act and feel, but he often draws on his own extensive weather knowledge and draws parallels of his own. For example, in Chapter 26, Ted compared Salim going off-course from his plan with the Coriolis Effect.
This feature of the novel is reflected in Siobhan Dowd’s use of chapter headings, many of which are related to weather. These are used as signposts, to link the weather name with events in the chapter. Ask students to go through the novel up to Chapter 32 and write down all the headings related to weather they can find, as well as how each heading links to events in that chapter.
The full list is: Chapters 2, 3, 4, 13, 16, 17, 23, 26, 29, 31, and 32.
Transform
Read Chapters 33–37.
Explain to students that, throughout the novel, we have been trying to solve the London Eye Mystery – how Salim managed to board the London Eye and then disappear. These chapters are the climax of the novel, showing us exactly what happened and answering our questions. All the clues found in the novel are brought together. Ask students to reflect again on how the author has maintained suspense and interest throughout, by feeding these clues slowly to the reader, and leaving many questions unanswered.
Using the timeline on page 7 of the Reading Guide ( WS 10b), ask students to bring together the events of the novel up until the end of Chapter 37, and how they add suspense for the reader. You could also ask them to complete a tension graph (see WS4) for the whole novel, showing how tension is built up and drawn out from the beginning of the mystery until it is solved.
Then point out that Siobhan Dowd still has one trick up her sleeve. Although the mystery of the London Eye is solved, Salim is not found at the same time. This means that the reader still has one major unanswered question, and the climax of the novel is further drawn out.
Review and reflect
Ask students to reflect on their reading of the novel. Did they guess what had happened? What clues did they miss? Were they interested throughout, or did the mystery fail to hook them in? Do they still have unanswered questions?
Students have looked at the theme of weather in this chapter, but many other chapter titles relate to the wheel itself. Discuss the meaning of the phrase ‘the wheel turns’ and how the wheel is used as a theme in the novel.
