Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Novel Study

Saturday 13th September is Roald Dahl day. To celebrate I will be teaching a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory novel study unit. I love using novels to teach across a range of different subject areas and this particular book is one of my favorites!

charlie-and-the-chocolate-factory-novel-study

Here are some of my top cross curricular ideas based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Literacy

I ask my students to write newspaper articles about Charlie finding the final Golden Ticket in the shop. This pushes the students to write formally and use the features of report writing. We discuss including key information (who, what, where, when and why) as well as including quotes from the characters in their report. This is also a great opportunity for students to generate their own engaging headlines.

Charlie Bucket’s house and the Inventing Room are fantastic to use as a basis for setting descriptions. I read the passages to the children and get them to imagine they are in that setting. Next we discuss what each of their senses would be experiencing. For example, the creaking door in Charlie’s house or the sound of the potions bubbling over in the factory. I always encourage them to use descriptive language and finally the students write a paragraph based on each sense.

Science

The novel is also great to use as a basis for a unit on plants. My students love learning about the cacao tree and finding out where chocolate comes from! A great activity is to study the life cycle of the cacao tree and learn all about the beans that make the delicious treat!

Social Science

The Charlie and the Chocolate Factory novel study is a great opportunity to study a country where the cacao plant grows. Students could produce fact files on the country and learn key facts, main cities, rivers and what life is like for the people who live there. Possible country studies could focus on Brazil, Ecuador, Nigeria, Ghana or the Ivory Coast.

Technology

There is so much scope here to develop students’ skills. My students love acting as Willy Wonka’s apprentice and designing their own chocolate product. I get them explore different ingredients which could go in their candy bar, think about packaging and create a persuasive poster advertising their product. We even made the new chocolate product which was lots of fun!

All the ideas above, plus many more are included in my Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Novel Study available in my Teachers Pay Teachers Store to save you time when planning your novel study.