Novel studies are a great way to engage students. Teaching a unit of work based around a particular book is a fantastic way to help students to make connections across the curriculum and it’s lots of fun! James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl is a wonderful book which deals with loneliness, friendship and teamwork. The book is ideal for a classroom novel study. Read on for my top tips for James and the Giant Peach activities!
James and the Giant Peach Character Study Activities
There are some very interesting characters in James and the Giant Peach, with a whole range of strengths and flaws. The characters have to deal with difficult situations and overcome problems. Try asking students to choose an event in the story and studying how a character reacts, thinking about their reasoning and motivation.
Setting Activities
Setting descriptions are ideal for developing descriptive vocabulary. Have students plan their setting description by choosing words associated with each sense to describe the setting. What can they see, hear and smell inside the peach? More advanced writers could record similes or metaphors to describe the setting. Then ask students to use their ideas to write sentences to describe the peach based on their ideas. This is also a great opportunity to use a thesaurus and expand vocabulary.
Reading Activities
Reading skills are a key focus during a novel study. It is important that students thinks about making connections between the story and themselves, other books and the wider world. Try asking students to think about particular events and why they happened, focusing on cause and effect.
Writing Tasks
This is where students can put the new vocabulary they learnt in the story and their imagination into action! Throughout the novel, ask students to create a range of pieces of writing across different text types. Other James and the Giant Peach writing activities include: James’ diary when he first discovers the Giant Peach, How does he feel? What is he thinking? What are his hopes? Another piece of imaginative writing is to ask your students to invent the way the Cloud-Men create a particular type of weather. You could give the students a weather or ask them to choose their own. As well as fiction writing, there are many opportunities for non-fiction writing such as a newspaper article of the peach arriving in New York, instructions on how to travel to New York or ask your students to write their own weather report.
James and the Giant Peach Vocabulary
Throughout the story, many of the characters sing songs containing rhyming couplets. A great activity is to take some of these words and ask your students to think of as many words that rhyme with these words as they can. This is great way to look at spelling patterns also. Also ask students to research new words they come across and write their own definitions.
Cross Curricular James and the Giant Peach Activities
There are lots of science activities you could base around James and the Giant Peach. These could could include a floating and sinking science experiment, investigating the life cycle of a peach tree or creating a bug fact file.
You can find all the activities mentioned in this post in my James and the Giant Peach Novel Study to save you hours of time.
The unit includes full teaching instructions and ideas for implementing the activities. Also included are activities on character, setting, vocabulary work, reading activities and summarizing.
It also includes chapter quizzes to assess your students’ understanding of the novel.
You can grab James and the Giant Peach Novel Study here!
Also, why not check out my ideas for Charlotte’s Web Novel Study here and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Novel Study here!
Leave a Reply