These Charlie and the Chocolate Factory activities are perfect for your class novel study! This book by Roald Dahl is wonderful to use as a basis for a class novel study and it lends itself not only to teaching reading and comprehensions skills, but is great to use as inspiration to teach a range of subjects across the curriculum. Read on for my top ideas for a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory novel study and how I love to use this book in my class.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Ideas for Literacy
You can create writing tasks across a number of fiction and non-fiction genres, using the book as a basis. 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. Discuss key information (who, what, where, when and why) as well as including newspaper features such as quotes from the characters in their report and picture captions. 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. Read the passages to the students and ask them to imagine they are in that setting. Next 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. Encourage them to use descriptive language and look up adjectives and adverbs in a dictionary and thesaurus. Once students have their plan, they can then write a paragraph based on each sense to create their own setting description.
Science
You can use Charlie and the Chocolate Factory activities to promote many science learning objectives. The novel is great to use as a basis for a unit on plants. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn about the cacao tree and study the life cycle of the plant. You could also investigate what plants need to grow well, such as sun light, warmth, water etc.
States of matter is another science topic that lends itself to the story. Use chocolate to investigate and compare the properties of solids and liquids.
While chocolate is a delicious treat, it is important to highlight the importance of a healthy diet and this is great chance for students to learn about food groups and plan a healthy meal.
Social Studies
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. Students could learn about foods, language, national holidays and landmarks in those countries. Possible country studies could focus on Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador, Nigeria, Ghana or the Ivory Coast.
Technology Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Activities
There is so much scope here to develop students’ skills. A fun class project could be to ask your students to design their own chocolate product. Ask students to explore possible ingredients which could go in their candy bar. They could think about packaging and create a persuasive poster advertising their product. They could make their new chocolate product!
If you would like to save the time and hassle of planning and creating your own Charlie and Chocolate Factory novel study, 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. I have a full teacher instructions, I have reading activities, writing tasks printables, character study worksheets and setting description activities.
Also included are cross-curricular activities all about chocolate, including the life cycle of the cacao tree, a country study and worksheets for designing a chocolate bar!
The unit also includes chapter questions with answers to assess your students’ comprehension and understanding of the book. Check the novel study out here!
You can also grab your FREE Charlie and the Chocolate Factory word search when you join my email list. Click here to sign up and download instantly.
Read about my ideas for the following novel study activities:
Charlotte’s Web Novel Study Activities
James and the Giant Peach Novel Study Activities
Because of Winn-Dixie Novel Study Activities
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