Wild by Emily Hughes, Flying Eye
Wild eyed with wonder, a small naked girl stares out from the cover of this picture book, the pupils of her eyes wide and
luminous. Turn to the title page and the same child looks grim and cross, her hair trussed into a topknot, a hint of
restrictive clothing below her chin.
Thus begins this tale of nature versus nurture, of a child brought up by animals, like Mowgli in ‘The Jungle Book’ and the
Wild Boy of Aveyron. Following a blissful early childhood, where she is depicted being taught to speak by a chorus of
birds, catch fish to eat by a bear and her cubs, and play roughly by foxes, spinning in a whirl of snapping jaws, the
unnamed child is discovered in the forest by ‘some new animals.’ These miserable creatures take her home and try to
force her into their accustomed way of doing things. A newspaper headline indicates that she has been taken in by a
psychiatrist and that she is considered to be a feral child. Her unhappiness eventually explodes and she returns to her
former serene life, taking with her the family’s cat and dog.
The text is minimal – spare, yet subtle and the pictures speak volumes. For one picture the caption simply reads ‘They
spoke wrong’. The carefully composed illustration depicts the child crouched in an enormously tall chair while the man
points at pictures and records her speech via an old fashioned gramophone, suggestive of Professor Higgins bullying Eliza
Doolittle into ‘speaking proper’.
Overall aims of this teaching sequence:
 To engage children with a story with which they will empathise.
 To explore themes and issues, and develop and sustain ideas through discussion, enabling children to make
connections with their own lives.
 To develop creative responses to the text through play, drama, music and movement, storytelling and artwork.
 To compose a free verse poem.
 To write in role in order to explore and develop empathy for a character.
 To write with confidence for real purposes and audiences.
This teaching sequence is designed for a Year 1 or Year 2 class.
Overview of this teaching sequence.
This teaching sequence is approximately 4 weeks long if spread out over 20 sessions.
The book supports teachers to teach about character development, emotional response to issues faced in a story and is a
fantastic text to support personal, social and emotional development; understanding the careful balance between nature
and nurture. Emily Hughes’ wonderfully expressive illustrations engage children in the emotional journey of the
characters. The sequence finishes with a focus on non-fiction writing which could be related to work covered in Science
sessions.
Key Teaching Approaches:
Responding to illustration
Book Talk
Word collection
Visualising
Drama and role play
Shared writing
Role on the Wall
Poetry
Storytelling
Writing in role
Non-Fiction writing
©The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education.
You may use this teaching sequence freely in your school but it cannot be commercially published or reproduced or used for anything other than educational purposes
without the express permission of CLPE.
Teaching Sessions
Session 1: Responding to illustration
This book has been chosen, in part, because of the quality of illustrations they contain and the ways in which the
illustrations work with and beyond the text to create and enhance meaning for the reader. Children will need time and
opportunity to enjoy and respond to the pictures, to talk together about what they contribute to their understanding of
the text and to illustrate themselves as an aid to thinking and organising language and planning for writing. As the
sessions unfold, there could be opportunities for children to develop their responses by drawing or painting in a similar
style to Emily Hughes’ illustrations exploring media and techniques used as part of Art sessions. You can find other
examples of her work on her blog at: http://e-hug.blogspot.co.uk/
 Look at the front cover illustration of the main character, without revealing the title of the book.
 What words or phrases can the children think of to describe them? You could use key questions to prompt thinking,
e.g. :
- Who are they? What do you think you know about them?
- What do they look like?
- How do they feel? Why do you think this?
- Where do they live?
 Allow time for the children to draw the character for themselves, this will allow them to think more deeply about the
character, her appearance. As they work, they can annotate with their thoughts about the character.
 This could lead into a more extended piece of character description.
Session 2: Deepening understanding about the character – Role on the Wall
Role on the wall is a technique that uses a displayed outline of the character to record feelings or what the character is like
on the inside (inside the outline) and outward appearances or how others perceive them (outside the outline) at various
stopping points across the story. Using a different colour at each of the stopping points allows you to track changes in the
character’s emotional journey.
 Look at the final spread of the book, removing the text. What else do we learn about the character?
 Draw a body outline onto a large sheet of paper or roll of lining paper to represent the girl; you could draw round one
of the children. Use a marker pen to annotate the outline to show what the children know about her outward
appearance – on the outside of the outline - and her feelings – on the inside.
 Go back to the children’s initial thoughts from yesterday – how does this match with what they have found out in the
illustration today?
 Focus in on the emotions recorded on the inside of the outline. How do we think this character feels? If the children
have a limited range of words, such as ‘happy’, use a thermometer image to build up a scale of suitable words as
synonyms for happy modelling and explaining new vocabulary to enlarge and extend children’s stock of words, e.g.:
Content
Glad
Pleased
Happy



Use the illustration to focus the children on inferring information from the picture. You could target questions to
draw out further information about the character and her life. Why do we think the character feels like this? What is
her life like? Who are her friends? What does she like to do?
You could enhance this by setting up storyboxes or a small world area for the children to explore and interact with the
characters in their setting.
Modelling first through shared writing, have the children write in role as the girl, explaining who she is, where she
lives and what she likes to do. You could also have the children write speech or thought bubbles to add to the
characters in the illustration.
©The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education.
You may use this teaching sequence freely in your school but it cannot be commercially published or reproduced or used for anything other than educational purposes
without the express permission of CLPE.
Session 3: Reading Aloud – Exploring setting
Reading aloud is one of the most important ways that children are motivated and supported to become readers, It is
essential that children experience hearing texts read aloud in the classroom as a regular part of each school day.
Reading aloud slows written language down so that children can hear and absorb the words, tunes and patterns. It
enables children to experience and enjoy stories they might otherwise not meet, enlarging their reading interests and
providing access to texts beyond their level of independence as readers.
 Read up to, ‘And she understood, and was happy.’
 Discuss what has been read. Did it match what was thought about the character in the previous session?
 Discuss the title of the book: Wild. What do the children think this means? Explore different meanings and
connurtations of the word ‘Wild’.
 Is she like a normal little girl? How is she the same as us? How is she different? Would you like to live like her? Why?
Why not?
 Discuss children’s responses together and have them decide if they would like to live in the wild or not and why. Have
them write their responses, justifying their reasons using conjunctions such as ‘and’, ‘so’ and ‘because’. Model some
examples of reasons in shared writing, justifying their reasons using conjunctions such as ‘and’, ‘so’ and ‘because’.
 Have the children write their own responses as to whether they would like to live in the wild or not and why.
Session 4: Visualising – Exploring setting
Drawing story settings prompts children to imagine what a scene looks like, or visualise it from a particular viewpoint. Like
drama, it enables children to enter the world of the story and provides support for writing.
 Prior to this session, if possible, a visit to a local wood or watching a video or looking at photographs of a woodland
setting will help to build children’s ideas and vocabulary.
 Using a sound stimulus such as http://naturesoundsfor.me/woodland-sounds-2, have the children visualise what it is
like where she lives. Draw along with the children to model how to quickly build up what they can see in their mind’s
eye.
 Using crayons, felt tips or other art materials have the children draw the wild forest setting, imagining what it would
be like to be there. Provoke thinking by exploring what they might be able to see, hear and smell there or how it feels
to be there. Make this a quick and fluid sketch. Alternatively, you could work on a larger wall display with each child
or groups of children working on specific elements of the setting.
 Have the children brainstorm words, phrases and sentences to describe what the setting is like and add these around
the picture or to the display.
 They could then go on to write a description of the setting.
Session 5: Poetry – Exploring descriptive language
Free Verse poems have no rhyming structure and often don't have a particular rhythm or syllable patterns; like their name
suggests, they are simply 'free'. They can be written by individuals, but also work extremely well as collaborative poems,
where members of a small group will add individual lines – after a process of building suitable vocabulary around a subject
and then a process of choosing particular words and phrases for the feeling and/or mood they create for the individual.
 Come back to the work done yesterday on the woodland setting, discussing some of the words, phrases and
sentences that best describe the poem.
 You might want to read the poem ‘The Grass House’ by Shirley Hughes, from her collection Out and About: A First
Book of Poems (Walker 2014) as part of this session to stimulate thinking. You could ask the children to respond to
the poem comparing and contrasting the feelings of the girl in the poem with the feelings of the girl in Wild about her
natural surroundings.
 Share writing a free verse poem about how the girl in Wild feels about the forest, drawing on what it is she loves
about the setting. For example:
The forest is my home,
My private place.
In the forest,
Leafy green trees hide me,
Protect me,
Shelter me.
©The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education.
You may use this teaching sequence freely in your school but it cannot be commercially published or reproduced or used for anything other than educational purposes
without the express permission of CLPE.
Up here,
In the green, live my friends:
Bear,
Bird,
Fox,
And I am surrounded by a bed of flowers.
Only the animals know I am here.
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The children could then go on to write their own lines for a poem collaboratively in groups or as individuals. These
could sit alongside their illustrations in a class anthology.
Session 6: Drama and Role Play: Freeze-Frame and Thought Tracking
Freeze-frames are still images or a tableau. They can be used to enable groups of children to examine a key event or
situation from a story and decide in detail how it could be represented. When presenting the freeze-frame, one of the
group could act as a commentator to talk through what is happening in their version of the scene, or individual characters
could be asked to speak their thoughts out loud.
 Re-read the story so far up to the page ‘One day she met some new animals in the forest...’
 Explore the illustration; who are these ‘new animals? Why are they there? What do they think when they see her?
What does she think when she sees them? Who is missing from this picture? Why? Use the facial expressions in the
illustration to track her feelings in a new colour on the role on the wall as the story progresses.
 Have the children work in groups of four to re-enact the scene in a freeze-frame. Have each child take the role of one
of the characters pictured – the two men, the dog and the girl. What do you think your character might be thinking or
saying at this point in the story? Why are they saying that? Encourage the children to justify their responses with
evidence from the text – including the illustrations.
 Write up your characters thoughts or speech in a speech bubble.
 If you wanted to extend this activity, you could go on to write group or individual playscripts of the scene and what
happens around it. You will need to look at examples of playscripts in the first instance to draw out the features and
conventions. You could follow up with groups performing their playscripts to the class as a final outcome to this.
Session 7: Shared and independent writing
Shared writing is possibly the most important way a teacher can help all the children to experience what it’s like to be a
writer. Acting as a scribe, the teacher works with a group of children to create a text together. Teacher and children work
as active partners, talking together to share ideas while the teacher guides the children through all the descriptions that
writers need to make and helps them shape their thoughts on paper.
 Re-read the story up to the point explored yesterday. Discuss with the children what they think the men should do
next? Why do they think they should do that?
 Through shared writing, scribing and extending the children’s ideas, write a letter of advice to the two men, telling
them what they think they should do upon finding the girl and why.
 Encourage children to write their own letters to the men. This can be made more authentic by using proper
notepaper and envelopes to write up their letters once they have been drafted and then the children could post these
in a postbox set up in the classroom.
Session 8: Shared reading and talk - Exploring issues and dilemmas
Conversations about books and shared texts help children to explore and reflect on texts in ways that are made
meaningful, personal and pleasurable.
 In preparation for this session, make a large letter of response back from the two men. This could read something
like:
Dear Year 1/2,
Thank you for your letter. We really appreciate you sending us your advice on what you thought we should do.
We were very surprised to find the girl in the trap in the forest. The trap had been set to catch a wild bear that people
©The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education.
You may use this teaching sequence freely in your school but it cannot be commercially published or reproduced or used for anything other than educational purposes
without the express permission of CLPE.
in the town had seen and were scared of. We really weren’t sure what to do when we found her!
After reading your letter and talking together, we really don’t think we should leave a small girl in a forest by herself
because it’s not safe. What if the wild bear found her?
So, we have decided to take her back to the town to someone who will be able to take care of her properly.
Thank you again for writing to us.
Best wishes,
Frank and Ed


Ask the children whether they agree or disagree with the men’s decision and why? What do they think will happen
when she is taken to the town? How will it make her feel? Do you think she will settle in?
Have the children write a letter back to the men to give them their opinion about what they have done, modelling
first through shared writing. Encourage them to extend sentences to justify or expand responses, using conjunctions
such as and, but, so and because.
Sessions 9 and 10: Shared reading and story mapping
Making a story map is a way of retelling the story. It is a graphic means of breaking a story down into episodes and
sequencing its events. This kind of graphic representation helps children to hold on to the shape of the story more
confidently so they can re-tell it orally or in writing. Children can also make story maps as a form of planning, to prepare
for their own writing.
 Re-read the story so far and on to the part ‘And she did not understand, and she was not happy’.
 Focus in on the illustrations in the spreads from her being in the car with the men up until this point. Storymap each
event and alongside each image make collections of words to describe her emotions across each spread, exploring
different and better words than the standard; happy, sad, angry. This would be a good opportunity to explore the use
of a good infant thesaurus, such as the Oxford First Thesaurus or the Collins Junior Illustrated Thesaurus.
 In the next session, use the storymap to track her emotions across the whole book from her highest point in the
forest to her lowest point here. What has made her feel like this? Why?
 Add thought bubbles to the illustration to share what she is thinking on this page and why. Return to the image at the
end and ask children what they think would make her happy again.
Session 11: Responding to reading and ‘Book Talk’
Discussion about books forms the foundations for working with texts. Children need frequent, regular and sustained
opportunities to talk together about the books they are reading as a whole class. The more experience that they have of
talking together like this the better they become at making explicit the meanings that a text holds for them: a child quoted
in Aidan Chambers’ book ‘Tell Me: Children, Reading and Talk’ says “we don’t know what we think about a book until
we’ve talked about it.” This book talk is supportive to all readers and writers, but it is particularly effective for children who
find literacy difficult. It helps the class as a whole to reach shared understandings and move towards a more dispassionate
debate of ideas and issues. Throughout this teaching sequence, we offer suggestions for the sorts of questions that
teachers and children might use in discussion. These questions are shown in italics.
 Read aloud from the beginning of the book, pausing to elicit responses to why the children think she destroyed the
house? Was this behaviour acceptable? Understandable?
 Read on until the end. Was the ending as they expected? Compare the events in the book to the predictions that the
children made about how to make the girl happy again.
 Discuss the story on a wider level, collecting children’s responses at a deeper level. You could use the following
prompts for discussion:
Tell me...
- Is this what you thought would happen? Why/Why not?
- Is there anything you particularly like/dislike about this text?
- Do you have any questions about the text?
©The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education.
You may use this teaching sequence freely in your school but it cannot be commercially published or reproduced or used for anything other than educational purposes
without the express permission of CLPE.

- Does it remind you of anything else in real life or in stories?
Add the final events to the storymap.
Sessions 12 & 13: Shared and independent writing – Drafting writing
Shared writing is possibly the most important way a teacher can help all the children to experience what it’s like to be a
writer. Acting as a scribe, the teacher works with a group of children to create a text together. Teacher and children work
as active partners, talking together to share ideas while the teacher guides the children through all the descriptions that
writers need to make and helps them shape their thoughts on paper.
 Read the whole text from beginning to end.
 Tell the children that they will be making their own books to re-tell the story in role as the girl.
 Model and scaffold this through shared writing, showing children how to use their storymaps to recap and follow the
sequence of the story while writing from the perspective of the girl.
 Supported through shared and guided writing, the children go on to draft their retelling.
 Encourage children to re-read sections of their text with a response partner to check it makes sense and make simple
revisions.
Sessions 14 & 15: Bookmaking – Publishing writing
Publishing their work for an audience helps children to write more purposefully. Bookmaking provides a motivating
context within which children can bring together their developing understanding of what written language is like; making
written language meaningful as they construct their own texts.
 Remind the children of the writing outcome: a retelling of Wild from the girl’s point of view.
 Show the children how to make their own book to exemplify the wild setting.
 Encourage them to revisit the drafts of their writing and to make simple revisions as appropriate, suggested by editing
partners or teacher marking.
 The children work individually, publishing their retelling in their handmade book.
 Talk with the children about the importance of the finished product; best handwriting, spelling revisions made and
accurate punctuation. Explain that these will be on a prominent display to be read by others.
 Give children the opportunity to read and respond to each other’s texts.
 The children could go on to write a book review or cover review to support another child’s text.
Session 15: Moving to Non-Fiction Writing – Shared reading
 Introduce to the children the idea of finding out more about some of the animals from the text that are the girl’s
friends. Focus first on the bear, who tucks her up on the first page.
 Use a mind map to collect information about what the children already think they know about bears and what they
would like to find out.
 Using a suitable non-fiction text such as Usborne Beginners: Bears; look at the features of a non-fiction text. Use the
contents page and index to see if you can find out the answer to something a child wants to find out, for example,
‘What do bears eat?’. Read the accompanying text to clarify the answer to the question.
 Think about the sorts of information that might be good to include in a non-chronological report about bears.
 Categorise this into headings, e.g.
o Different types of bears
o Where bears live
o What bears eat
o What they look like
 Use the text to find information and model how to make notes under the different headings in a planning frame:
Different types of bear
Where bears live
What they look like
What bears eat
©The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education.
You may use this teaching sequence freely in your school but it cannot be commercially published or reproduced or used for anything other than educational purposes
without the express permission of CLPE.
Sessions 16 & 17: Drafting writing
 Using appropriate non-fiction text and other sources of information e.g. online at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature or
National Geographic or the World Wildlife Fund’s Kids website, continue to collect information about the girl’s forest
friends to produce your own non-fiction text. You may wish to explore foxes, wolves, crows, deer.
 Ensure children know the appropriate features for the text they are writing, for example that it has a contents page,
glossary and index and that the text is organised into sections of information demarcated by headings and may use
sub-headings to break down information, explanations, diagrams, captions and pictures (most likely photographs).
 Supported by shared and guided writing, the children go on to draft their non-chronological report or non-fiction text
about their chosen animal.
 Encourage children to re-read sections of their text with a response partner to check it makes sense and make simple
revisions.
Sessions 18 & 19: Publishing writing
 Encourage the children to revisit the drafts of their writing and to make simple revisions as appropriate, suggested by
editing partners or teacher marking.
 The children work individually, publishing their writing in the form they would most like. This could be a PowerPoint
book, a handmade book or a text made on a desktop publisher.
 Talk with the children about the importance of the finished product; best handwriting, spelling revisions made and
accurate punctuation. Explain that these will be on a prominent display to be read by others.
Session 20: Responding to texts
 Have a session where the children read and respond to each other’s texts.
 Tell your partner three things you have learned about their animal from reading their book.
 Write reviews of each other’s texts to display alongside the published texts in a prominent area where others can
read them.
Other ideas to use across the curriculum:
Science
 Find out about the animals and the habitat in which they live.
 Explore food chains in the context of the forest animals.
 Link to growing plants, lifecycles of plants in the natural environment of the forest.
 Classify plants and animals in the forest environment.
 Observe changes in local woodland or trees across the four seasons.
Geography
 Investigate the difference between the forest and the town.
 Debate: Where would you rather live and why?
Design and Technology
 Using only natural materials, design and make:
•
a comfortable bed in the wood for the girl
• a toy for the girl to play with
Art and Design
 Learn and appreciate the work of artists – both past and contemporary – who explore nature in their work. Children
can describe the similarities and differences between different practices and disciplines and make links to their own
work.
 Use natural objects as a stimulus for polyblock printing inspired by the natural work of William Morris.
Music
 Listen to woodland inspired music. Create a music score for the story, a setting or the girl’s emotional journey
P.E.
 Explore climbing, swinging and travelling using the context of the forest.
Computing
 Create the non-fiction text using PowerPoint/Moviemaker that combines words with images (and sounds).
 Use the internet to research the animals in the text.
Personal, Social and Emotional
 Explore viewpoints; what the adults think the girl should be like, how she dresses and plays and what she thinks is
©The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education.
You may use this teaching sequence freely in your school but it cannot be commercially published or reproduced or used for anything other than educational purposes
without the express permission of CLPE.


right and natural for her.
Debate: Should wild animals be kept in homes? In zoos? Why/Why not?
Learn to empathise: managing emotions. Respond to how she reacts to being trapped in the house. Talk about how
we vocalise and manage our feelings and what to do if we feel no-one is listening to us.
©The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education.
You may use this teaching sequence freely in your school but it cannot be commercially published or reproduced or used for anything other than educational purposes
without the express permission of CLPE.