This section contains resources written for teachers who might like to use Seal/Girl in lessons with KS2 and KS3. It’s currently being developed in collaboration with Emily Smith, who’s a KS2 English specialist and practising teacher. The KS2 resources have been written by her and tried and tested with her pupils as remote learning during the pandemic lockdown, so feel free to adapt in any way you like for online or classroom teaching.
These ten SAT-style questions are all based on the Prologue of Seal/Girl. They cover a range of simulated question styles and mark values.
An exploratory resource that gets pupils thinking about how front covers contribute to genre expectations and give rise to narrative prediction. Allows pupils to practise skills in prediction, inference and genre classification.
Following on from thinking about the front cover, this resource continues to develop skills in prediction and genre identification, and builds pupils’ ability to support their inferences with language analysis.
This resource has three activities, all focusing now much more closely on inference. They build confidence in information retrieval and writing in a purposeful way for a context about what they infer from their reading about the three main characters who are introduced.
Chapter 2 activities are all about looking for detail. They mainly focus on locations and events, with a quote-finding activity that encourages pupils to match their internal vision of the chapter with actual places, followed by a choice of activity using visual skills involving mapping and sequencing information retrieved.
Chapter 3 focuses on VIPERS skills, with brief but highly focused activities testing vocabulary, inference, prediction, explanation, retrieval and summarising.
There are two resources for Chapter 4, which can be used in sequence or as a choice. The first asks pupils to think about the character of Mary, who acts as a bridge between myth and reality for Gorran. Pupils are asked to research their own Cornish myth, and to re-write it for a younger audience.
In this worksheet, pupils can use the research they did for the previous Chapter 4 activity, or start from scratch to transform a myth or legend into a new written form.
Chapter 5 work encourages pupils to look beyond the discovery of the entangled seal, and to think about the wider effects of marine pollution worldwide. It gives them the opportunity to research and find out about other marine creatures impacted on by the issues in the book.
The second sheet that accompanies the study of Chapter 5 can again be used on its own, or as a follow-up to the previous one. It also has its own research task if you’d like to combine the two skills covered by both Chapter 5 activities. A full PDF copy of the charity’s promotional leaflet has been attached to the end of the worksheet for easier viewing.
Elspeth Stevenson 