Opening Doors to a Richer English Curriculum for Ages 6 to 9 takes Bob Cox's award-winning Opening Doors series into bold new territories, providing a treasury of techniques and strategies all carefully selected to support the design of a deeper, more creative and more expansive curriculum.
Together with Leah Crawford and Verity Jones, Bob has compiled this rich resource to help teachers enhance their learners' engagement with challenging texts and develop their writing skills as budding wordsmiths. It includes 15 ready-to-use units of work covering a range of inspiring poetry and prose from across the literary tradition, complete with vivid illustrations by Victoria Cox.
Bob, Leah and Verity's innovative ideas on theory, best practice and how to cultivate a pioneering classroom spirit are all integrated into the lesson suggestions, which have been designed for both the teacher's and the learners' immediate benefit.
Together they empower teachers to explore with their learners the scope and depth of literature capable of inspiring high standards and instilling a love of language in its many forms. Furthermore, they help teachers to lay down intricate curricular pathways that will prompt their pupils to better enjoy literature, read and analyse texts with a greater sense of curiosity, and write with more originality.
The book includes a great range of texts both as the core of each unit and as link reading, incorporating some contemporary texts to show how past and present co-exist ' and how various literary styles can be taught using similar principles, all of which are open to further adaptation. The authors have also suggested key concepts around which the curriculum can be built, with the units providing examples with which you can work.
All of the extracts and illustrations you will need in order to begin opening doors in your classroom are downloadable, and the book also includes a helpful glossary of key terms.
Suitable for teachers of pupils aged 6 to 9.
Units include (click on the links below to view a collection of written work produced by school children aged 6 to 9 who are following the passages and exercises related to the texts included in this book):
Part 1: Opening Doors to Poetry
1. I Pulled a Hummingbird Out of the Sky 'Wind' by Dionne Brand
2. Do You Have Time to Stand and Stare? 'Leisure' by W. H. Davies
3. Mini-Beast Magic 'Hurt No Living Thing' by Christina Rossetti
4. How Out of Breath You Are 'Dear March – Come In' by Emily Dickinson
5. Voices in an Empty Room 'Green Candles' by Humbert Wolfe
6. Faceless 'Prince Kano' by Edward Lowbury
7. Green-Eyed Scratcher 'Cat!' by Eleanor Farjeon
Part 2: Opening Doors to Prose
8. Foundling 'Over the Hills and Far Away' by Hilary McKay and Blackberry Blue' by Jamila Gavin
9. A Power Struggle 'The Frost, the Sun, and the Wind' (Russian folk tale translated by Charles Downing)
10. Stories and More Stories 'Granny's Wonderful Chair' by Frances Browne
11. That Is Disgusting! 'The American Woman's Home' by Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
12. Shadow in a Drawer 'Peter Pan' by J. M. Barrie
13. Once Upon a Time There Was a Piece of Wood 'Pinocchio' by Carlo Collodi
14. Whirlpools! 'The Island of the Nine Whirlpools' by Edith Nesbit
15. The Butterfly Dance 'The Story of the Blue Planet' by Andri Snær Magnason
