'Hoot' activity grid

Activity grid for whole-class novel reading with the novel 'Hoot' by Carl Hiaasen. The story concerns the plight of an endangered owl and the youngsters who do their best to save it, including a homeless boy, his sister, and the bullies who torment them The activity grid for this novel lists reading skills, suggested activities and examples from the text for teaching with the whole novel. The reading skills are: Using strategies to decode words they don’t know – phonics, syntax, word recognition and context; Engaging with meaning as well as decoding; Sensing miscues and then self-correcting; Tackling extended sentences; Using punctuation, paragraphing and text layout as a guide to meaning; Developing a mental map of the text as they read; Visualisation and other sensory responses; Prediction, retrospection and speculation; Questioning; Passing mental comments and savouring the text; Empathising; Establishing a relationship with the narrator; Re-reading, re-evaluating and other clarification activities; Reading between the lines and other interpretation activities; Relating the text to one’s own experience and knowledge, including other literature; Adopting an appropriate reading stance; Developing judgements and preferences; Sensing of the writer at work, the artifice of the text.