Overview and Outcomes:

This three-week Writing Root is based on the story of The BFG by Roald Dahl.  It includes exemplified grammar activities throughout, as well as including drama techniques such as thought tapping. Visual images and music are also incorporated. Specific teaching strategies are highlighted in bold and there is a glossary to explain how each of these work in a classroom situation.  The children will create diary entries as Sophie and write a new chapter/own version of what might happen before creating their own giant story. The 2016 film can be used alongside the text as an additional text form or in full after session 10 but teachers will need to use the original written form first as many of the activities need children to draw upon the language that Dahl used.

Synopsis of Text:

On a dark, silvery moonlit night, Sophie is snatched from her bed by a giant.  Luckily it is the Big Friendly Giant, the BFG, who only eats snozzcumbers and glugs frobscottle. But there are other giants in Giant Country. Fifty foot brutes who gallop far and wide every night to find human beans to eat. Can Sophie and her friend the BFG stop them? Let's hope so - otherwise the next child a gruesome giant guzzles could be YOU.

Text Rationale:

This is a classic novel by one of the world’s most famous children’s authors.  Told in characteristic Roald Dahl style, this a narrative where children and the underdog champion over injustice.  Children will be engaged by the witty – and sometimes entirely made-up! – language and the book will act as a springboard into the fantastical world of Roald Dahl's other titles.  There are strong messages about being true to yourself, recognising that it’s ok to be different and the importance of standing up for what you believe in.

Links and themes:

Giants, the Queen, dreams, being yourself

Date written: June 2017        Updated: December 2021