Grendel, written and illustrated by David Lucas (Walker)
Grendel is a little monster who adores chocolate. So when he is presented with the opportunity of making
three wishes – guess what he does? In this new take on the King Midas story, a wish that everything he
touches would turn to chocolate has the inevitable consequences.
Overall learning aims of this teaching sequence:
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To think and talk confidently about their response to the book, using prediction, asking questions,
making connections with their own experience
To encourage collaborative narrative play
To develop sustained storymaking and storytelling
To enjoy listening to and using spoken and written language in play and learning
To use language to imagine and recreate roles and experiences
To think about the story meanings conveyed in the illustrations
To explore the story through play, role-play and storytelling
To write for meaning and purpose in a variety of narrative and non-narrative forms
This teaching sequence is designed for a Nursery or Reception class.
Overview of this teaching sequence.
All of the Power of Pictures teaching sequences are aimed to develop an appreciation of art and picture
books across age ranges. The sequence will have a strong emphasis on spending time exploring and
responding to illustrations, drawing and illustrating as part of the writing process and will culminate in a
bookmaking activity to exemplify the process of bookmaking and allow children to see themselves as
authors. The work done in the sequence could be enhanced by having an author/illustrator work alongside
children at some stage of the process.
Teaching Approaches:
 Responding to illustration
 Using drawing and modelling to create a
character
 Reading aloud and re-reading
 Story mapping
 Book talk
 Role-Play and Drama
 Visualising
Writing Outcomes:
 Speech/thought Bubbles
 Wish Star
 Story maps
 Notes of advice
 Poems about chocolate
 Bookmaking
Other useful texts and resources:
Other texts by David Lucas:
This is My Rock (Flying Eye, 2015)
A Letter for Bear (Flying Eye, 2013)
The Skeleton Pirate (Walker, 2012)
Christmas at the Toy Museum (Walker, 2011)
Lost in the Toy Museum (Walker, 2011)
Cake Girl (Andersen Press, 2009)
Peanut (Walker, 2008)
The Lying Carpet (Andersen Press, 2008)
The Robot and the Bluebird (Andersen Press, 2007)
Something to Do (Gullane, 2007)
©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.
Whale (Andersen Press, 2006)
Nutmeg (Andersen Press, 2005)
Halibut Jackson (Andersen Press, 2003)
The Me Books app has e-books available of:
Cake Girl
Nutmeg
Halibut Jackson
Find information about these at: http://www.mebooks.co/
David Lucas’s Website:
http://davidlucas.org.uk/
Links to other Traditional Stories:
Yummy! by Lucy Cousins (Walker) OP
The Leopard’s Drum by Jessica Souhami (Frances Lincoln)
The Gigantic Turnip by Aleksei Tolstoy and Niamh Sharkey (Barefoot)
No Dinner! by Jessica Souhami (Frances Lincoln)
Other Monster texts:
Leonardo the Terrible Monster by Mo Willems (Walker)
Not Now, Bernard by David McKee (Andersen Press)
Two Monsters by David McKee (Andersen Press)
Monster Day at Work by Sarah Dyer (Frances Lincoln)
Creepy Monsters, Sleepy Monsters by Jane Yolen and Kelly Murphy (Walker)
Websites to support understanding around picturebook creation:
The Picturebook Makers blog gives lots of useful insights into the creative processes of a great number of
author illustrators, including Power of Pictures partners Benji Davies, Chris Haughton, Viviane Schwarz,
Alexis Deacon and Mini Grey: http://blog.picturebookmakers.com
Websites to support responses to art:
National Gallery webpages on how to read paintings:
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/learning/teachers-and-schools/teaching-english-and-drama/how-toread-a-painting
Teaching Sessions
Before Beginning the Sequence:
 You may want to set the scene by making a cave in the role-play area. Decorate with a ‘Beware
Monsters’ sign and other accessories that can be seen in the illustrations of the text.
 Prepare a class reading journal by sewing or stapling together sugar paper to collect children’s
responses or examples of their work throughout the unit.
 Spend time exploring the style of David Lucas’ other texts; in particular Halibut Jackson and The
©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.
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Robot and the Bluebird. Allow children time and space to explore, comment on and discuss the style
of illustration used. David Lucas is particularly interested in shape and pattern. Ask the children to
comment on what shapes and patterns they can see in his work.
Look particularly at the endpapers from Halibut Jackson and The Robot and the Bluebird. Allow
children time and space to look at how he has created the flowers, leaves and birds with different
shapes and patterns.
At teacher knowledge level, David talks more about developing his personal style at:
http://davidlucas.org.uk/evolving-a-visual-style/
Give the children suitable collage materials and allow them to create different pictures from cut out
shapes.
Read aloud and discuss the two books. Can children make connections between them? What is
similar and different in the stories?
Response to illustration
In the best picture books illustration and text work closely together to create meanings. Children are
naturally drawn to the illustrations in a picture book and are frequently far more observant than an adult
reader. Children’s interest in images and their ability to read them can be developed through carefully
planned interventions with an emphasis on talk.
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Look at the illustration of the setting on the endpapers of the book.
Ask the children to talk to a partner about things they can see in the illustration. Use this activity to
gauge an understanding of children’s base vocabulary and identify opportunities to extend this
throughout the sequence.
Talk about the colours and patterns that have been used in this illustration and the composition in terms
of the space on the page. Which objects do you think are important in this story? Why?
Focus in on the cave. Who do they think lives there? What do they look like? What might their story be?
Scribe the children’s responses as a record of their discussions.
Illustrating Characters
Illustrating characters alongside an illustrator or enabling adult gives children a starting point into the
process of how to bring characters to life through illustration. Children who are less confident to begin this
process can see where starting points are, the shapes that are used to build up characters and how detail
such as proportion, facial expression, clothing and props can add layers of understanding about character
and emotion.
This activity would work best in small groups.
 Before beginning this session, you will need to have available drawing paper, pencils, watercolours
and fineliner pens.
 Look at the illustration of Grendel sitting on the log on the title page – without revealing the cover or
title of the book. Ask the children who they think this is? What are they like? What do you think
they are doing?
 Have a large-scale copy of the illustration to note initial ideas about the character and to record the
children’s first perceptions.
 Watch the video of David Lucas drawing Grendel on the Power of Pictures website. Look at the
shapes he uses to form the character.
 Draw a large-scale version of Grendel for the children to see.
 What words or phrases can the children think of to describe him? Write these around the image of
Grendel. Take initial thoughts about the character, who he is, what he is like.
 Model to the children how to follow David Lucas’s process to create one of the characters using
pencil at first. Encourage the children to work alongside you – it will therefore be important to work
on a large scale on a flip chart or under a visualiser so that the children can clearly see what you are
©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.
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doing at each step and follow the process. Talk carefully about shapes, sizes and proportion as you
work and what you are focusing on to allow the children to see the process of creating this character
live.
When you have finished, step back and look at the character you have created. Write your thoughts
about them as words and phrases around the picture or as a character description to accompany it.
You could use key questions to prompt thinking, e.g. Who is he? What is his name? Where does he
live? Who with? Who are his friends? What does he like doing? Encourage the children to do the
same orally, talking about their character.
As the children: if this character were to think or say something, what would they say?
Record in a thought or speech bubble to put on your collage as a model for the children. When doing
this it is important to write the words first, then shape the bubble around it, so as not to constrain
the children’s thinking.
After this, scribe the children’s own ideas in speech bubbles.
Allow time for the children to blu-tac their work around the room and explore each other’s ideas and
creations. Give children the chance to talk about each other’s work, discussing their thoughts about
the character they have created.
In continuous provision, you could also provide further opportunities for children to make another version of
Grendel using collage materials. They could also use other media such an ICT programme, a puppet using
illustration and lolly sticks or they could make a salt dough or clay version of the character. The children
could compare these different techniques and outcomes, commenting on the effect each one creates.
Book Talk
Discussion about books forms the foundations for working with books. Children need frequent, regular and
sustained opportunities to talk together about the books that they are reading as a whole class. The more
experience they have of talking together like this the better they get at making explicit the meaning that a
text holds for them.
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Look at the next double page spread in the text where Grendel is seen with his mum and his dog; ask
the children what further information this gives us about the character. Look carefully at the
character’s gaze, body language, facial expressions and props to enable children to make deeper
inferences about the characters and their relationships.
Have the children return to the copy of the first illustration they looked at and record their
responses in a different colour around it to show how their understanding about the characters
progresses, the more of the story they see.
Give time for the children to talk about responses to this new picture and to note any questions they
have about this particular illustration.
Read the text that accompanies the image. What else have we found out about Grendel?
Ask the children to think about the way in which Grendel may be similar to them. Ask the children
about the things they love. Encourage the children to talk about the things they love. Scribe some of
these thoughts to add to a working display, encouraging the children to talk about things of
importance to them.
Hearts could be cut out of coloured paper for the children to draw or scribe things that they love as part of
continuous provision. This could lead to a home learning activity around creating shrine boxes with the
children; filling a shoe box or similar sized box with objects, photographs etc. of importance, and having
these as a talking point in the setting.
Role on the Wall
Role on the wall is a technique that uses a displayed outline of the character to record feelings (inside the
outline) and outward appearances (outside the outline) at various stopping points across the story. Using a
©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.
different colour at each of the stopping points allows you to track changes in the character’s emotional
journey.
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Read the next two pages of the text, until Grendel snatched the chocolate egg and ran.
Re-read the first section of text and look at the accompanying image. Draw out through discussion
and close observation of the illustration how the children think the different characters are feeling.
Ask the children to comment on Grendel’s behaviour and manners. The children may bring their own
experiences to the text at this point. Give the children time to talk about situations they have been
in like this.
Prepare a role on the wall – an outline of the character of Grendel – and collect children’s responses
to what they can tell about Grendel’s character from just this page. Again, encourage the children to
look carefully at character’s gaze, body language, facial expressions and props to enable children to
make deeper inferences about the characters and their behaviours. Focus in on the words in the
text, what do they tell us?
Now move to the second page/frame; what has changed in the two characters’ gaze, body language
and facial expressions? What further information does this tell us about Grendel’s character? Add
this to the role on the wall in a different colour. Then, focus on the words, which give us important
clues about the character.
Continue to return to the role on the wall, adding the children’s thoughts and ideas in different
colours at key stopping points in the text.
Visualisation
Asking children to picture or visualise their ideas is a powerful way of encouraging them to move into a
fictional world. Children can be asked to picture the scene in their mind's eye or walk round it in their
imaginations. Finally they can bring it to life recreating it in drawing, painting or other media.
Illustrating story settings or key events prompt 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.
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Re-read the story so far, but cover the last sentence, “I just wish I had more chocolate!” he said, with
a post-it note.
Scan or copy the illustration of Grendel holding the note towards the end of the book. Ask the
children to imagine they had got this note inside a chocolate egg.
Think about the concept of being given three wishes – if you were given three wishes, what would
you wish for? Would the wishes be just for things for you or would you do things that could be for
others?
Return to the role on the wall and the discussions from the first session to revisit what we know
about Grendel’s character. What do you think he would wish for? Scribe the children’s suggestions.
Give time for the children to share their ideas and look at the similarities and differences in their
responses. Celebrate the fact that different ideas came from the exercise because we all have our
own story ideas from our own imaginations and that makes us all individual storytellers.
As part of continuous provision, encourage the children to draw or mark make their own wishes inside stars
cut from paper or drawn on the ground with chalks in the outdoor area.
Book Talk
Discussion about books forms the foundations for working with books. Children need frequent, regular and
sustained opportunities to talk together about the books that they are reading as a whole class. The more
experience they have of talking together like this the better they get at making explicit the meaning that a
text holds for them.
©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.
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Re-read the story so far, and reveal the last sentence, “I just wish I had more chocolate!” he said,
covered in the previous session.
Ask the children if they think Grendel’s wish is a good one? What could be good about it? Might
there be any bad things about the wish he has made? What could these be? Note children’s
responses around a copy of the illustration of Grendel reading the note and the accompanying
sentence, “I just wish I had more chocolate!” he said.
Read aloud up to “I wish... everything I touch turns to chocolate!”.
Return to the role on the wall. What do we think about the character of Grendel now? What is he
like on the inside? Write these new thoughts on the inside of the illustration. Hone in on language
that gives clues to his wider character like ‘Give it to me!’ and ‘snatched’. What do you think is
meant by his mum saying “I was only going to give it to you if you were good.”? What does this tell
us about him?
Think about Grendel’s wish more widely. Do they think it could have any good or bad consequences?
Introduce the concept of selfishness. Is his wish a good one? Will it benefit others? Do you think
Grendel is being sensible when he makes this wish?
Small World Play
Opportunities for small world play that are based on a known story promote talk about the shape of the
story. They encourage children to discuss key elements such as character and plot and to make decisions
about how they create the setting. As they play, whether as individuals or in co-operation with others, they
practise their narrative skills and 'try on' the different characters using different voices to bring them to life.
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Re-read the start of the story, and read on until It was so much fun...
Talk about the world of chocolate Grendel has created; what would it be like to be there? What
would you see? How would it smell? What would you do if you were there? Collect the children’s
thoughts around an illustration of Grendel in the chocolate setting.
As part of the continuous provision have chocolate playdough (see
http://theimaginationtree.com/2012/01/easy-chocolate-play-dough-recipe.html for a recipe) and
other small parts available for the children to make their own chocolate world.
Take photographs and record examples of children’s talk as they work that describe the setting that
they are making.
Leave the chocolate world out in preparation for the following activity.
Shared Writing
Shared writing is one of the most important ways a teacher can show children how writing works and what
it’s like to be a writer.
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Focus on the chocolate worlds the children have created from playdough; can children think of
words and phrases that describe what the chocolate world would be like? Focus back on the
questions of how it looks and smells and what it would be like to be there.
Scribe their words and record on caption strips, helping them to structure their thinking and expand
on their ideas where necessary.
Arrange the children’s words to form and write a group poem about the chocolate world e.g.
Chocolate trees,
Sweet and sticky,
Everything is brown.
I want to nibble on a leaf!
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Perform the poem as a group, encouraging children to add actions or to use their voices in different
ways as they perform.
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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.
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Children can then go on to record or scribe a similarly structured poem about the chocolate world
they have created.
Understanding story structure – building the problem: Sketching ideas
When planning and developing ideas for picture book narratives, children may wish to approach the process
in different ways and should be supported to do so. Some children, like some authors, may think of the words
in writing first and then the images that will accompany them. Others may think of the pictures first before
composing accompanying text and others will work with a combination of the two. Throughout the writing
process it is therefore important for children to be given materials and space to allow them to plan and
compose ideas in different ways.
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Re-read the story from the beginning and on to revealing what happens after Grendel makes his
wish. Spend time looking at each image as you read the accompanying text, looking carefully at
Grendel’s facial expressions and body language considering his feelings as reactions as this part of
the story moves on and looking at what else is happening in the wider aspects of the pictures.
Pause at the double page spread divided into three panels, starting And the path. SLURP!
Read the text that accompanies the last panel image, It was so much fun… ask the children what
they think might happen next?
Allow time for the children to think about how the story might continue. What might happen next?
Provide large drawing paper for the children to work on together to create the next part of the story
based on their discussions.
Give time for the children to draw and if they are able, to write their ideas in whichever way their
ideas for the next part of the story come to them.
Display the group images and give time for the children to share their ideas and look at the
similarities and differences in their responses.
Exploring dilemmas through Freeze-frame
Freeze-frames are still images or tableaux. They can be used to enable groups of children to examine a key
event or situation from a picture book 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 can be asked to speak their thoughts out loud.
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Read the book from the beginning up until the page where the dog rushes to meet Grendel and is
turned to chocolate. How does this compare to what the children thought would happen in their
drawings?
Read on until Grendel’s mother comes in to see what he has done and she, too, is turned to
chocolate.
Make a circle and allow pairs of children to come into the centre and freeze-frame as Grendel and
the dog in this scene. Invite the other children to think about what the characters might be thinking
or saying and scribe these on a whiteboard, coming into the centre to share their different ideas.
Then reveal the next spread “Grendel! What have you done?” said Mum. Look carefully at the
character’s gaze, body language, facial expressions and other important parts of the setting in the
illustration to enable children to make deeper inferences. What do you think will happen next?
Why?
Look at the first frame on the next page, covering up the final frame, analysing in the same way as
the previous spreads.
Give the children time in threes to recreate and freeze-frame the moment where Grendel’s mother
is turned to chocolate. Invite each child to take on a role as Grendel, the dog and Grendel’s mother.
When in the freeze-frame, again give time for the children to think about what their character might
be thinking or saying at this point in the story.
Use a speech or thought bubble frames to record ideas writing as the character would think or
©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.
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speak. If you have iPad access, you could photograph the page and use the Comic Book! App to add
in the speech bubbles.
Give time for the children to share their ideas and look at the similarities and differences in their
responses.
Response to Illustration:
The children's books featured on the Power of Pictures have been chosen because of the quality of the
illustrations they contain and the ways in which the illustrations work with the text to create meaning for the
reader. Children will need time and opportunities to enjoy and respond to the pictures and to talk together
about what the illustrations contribute to their understanding of the text.
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Reveal the last frame with Grendel in blank space, declaring “I hate chocolate!”
Ask the children: Why is Grendel so angry? Why does he hate chocolate now?
To start off discussions, you could invite children to make personal connections with the story –
Have you ever done anything that you have felt terrible about? How did it make you feel? How did
you react? How did you make it better? What do the children think about what Grendel has done?
Do they think his wish was a good wish now? Do they have any advice on how to make things
better?
Model writing a letter to Grendel, incorporating the children’s advice and ideas.
Have a postbox, some writing paper and envelopes available in the continuous provision so that the children
could write their own letters to Grendel. Have adults available to scribe their talk alongside their mark
making if children are emerging as writers.
Book Talk
This book talk is supportive to all readers and writers, but it is especially empowering for children who find
literacy difficult. It helps the class as a whole to reach shared understandings and move towards a more
dispassionate and informed debate of ideas and issues.
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Read the next double page spread. Give children time to explore and discuss the melting scene and
Grendel’s reactions. What does he think and how does he feel?
Come together to explore ideas around what Grendel’s last wish might be.
Give each child a star shaped piece of paper and scribe their ideas for what Grendel might wish for,
to stick around a copy of the illustration of Grendel crossing his claws.
Gallery Walk
A gallery walk allows children to walk the story of a picture book. The illustration spreads without text are
displayed in sequence around the classroom or larger hall space and the children walk individually or in
groups around the room building their own picture of the narrative through the illustration. Children can
discuss their different interpretations of the story by discussing the images, working out what is happening
and possible motivations of the characters. They can also empathise with different characters and situations
by drawing on personal experiences.
This activity may work best in small groups.
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Before the session, prepare copies of the final spreads of the story.
Encourage the children to walk around each image, spending time looking carefully at the detail in each
spread to conclude the story. Encourage the children to talk about what they think is happening and
why.
After this, read aloud the text that accompanies each image for the children to hear.
Once they have finished looking at each image and hearing the end of the story read aloud, encourage
©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.
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them to reflect on the end of the story. Was the ending as they expected? How did it make you feel?
What questions are you left with after finishing the book?
Later in the day, come back together as a whole group to share responses to these questions and note
these down on the working wall or in the shared journal.
Discuss the following questions with the children:
o What do you think the lesson of this story was?
o Do you think that Grendel has learned a lesson? What do you think it was?
o Do you think his character has or will change? Why or why not? If so, how?
Collect responses on the working wall or in a shared journal.
Re-read the whole book all the way through.
Talk with the children about their responses to the story and to the illustrations. What did they like
and/or dislike? Would they recommend the book to someone else? Why? Why not?
Ask the children; what will you tell your friends about this book? What won’t you tell them because it
might spoil the book for them?
Re-enactment through play and Role-Play
Exploring narrative through a range of play-based experiences helps children to step into the world of the
picture book and to explore it more completely. This is important throughout the primary school years.
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Provide props and costumes in the continuous provision that will enable the children to revisit the
text through re-enactment and role-play.
Encourage adults in the setting to role-play alongside the children, taking on the roles of different
characters such as Mum or the dog.
Revisiting and retelling
Opportunities for re-reading a book that they have previously listened to, or read for themselves, helps all
children to engage more deeply with it. Reading and re-reading known texts is important for all readers, but
particularly so for less experienced readers or those for whom English is an additional language. Re-reading
helps to make the text more familiar and enables children to read it more confidently, fluently and with
greater attention to the meaning.
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Read the whole story on several occasions, enabling the children to become familiar with the
sequence of events as they unfold in the story.
Prepare magnetic story props of the characters and settings to enable oral storytelling and revisiting.
Provide extra copies of the book, alongside the props to support the children’s retelling and early
attempts at reading. The children will be able to draw on key words and phrases to help sequence
the story and on the illustrations to add detail to their retelling of the story.
Play the video of David Lucas reading the story aloud. This is available on the Power of Pictures
website: https://www.clpe.org.uk/powerofpictures/books-and-teaching-sequences
Ask the children what it felt like to hear the author reading the book.
Story maps
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.
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Create a shared story map to recall the story. Focus on children recalling the key events in the story.
Look at how to create different kinds of storyboards and story maps to aid children’s recall and
retelling.
Look at how to use text and pictures to record key events, speech and other words and phrases of
©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.
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particular importance to the story; e.g. Grendel exclaiming “I hate chocolate!”
Use the story map to reflect on the story from Grendel’s point of view. How does he feel at different
points of the story? Support children in key words and phrases to convey Grendel’s emotions.
In a large-scale made book, share writing the children’s retelling of the story with you scribing the
words composed by the class, to retell the story.
As you scribe, talk with the children about the language and the patterns, and shape of the story.
Write each ‘episode’ on a separate sheet for children to illustrate with large pictures or paintings.
In continuous provision have large paper and mark making equipment available for children to record their
own story maps. Encourage the children to use their own story map to retell the story orally, using the
patterns of language from the text. Have story props available again for children to re-enact the story using
their story map as a stimulus this time.
Creating Characters
Drawing characters focuses attention on them: how they look; what they say; how they behave. To build
their ideas of what a character is like, children have to refer to the text. They can also be encouraged to draw
on the language of the text in making annotations around the drawings.
You may want to complete this activity in small groups so that each group has the opportunity to create
their own book.
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Explain to the children that we are going to write our own story about a character that makes a
foolish wish with disastrous consequences.
Give time in the first session for the children to come up with a greedy character. What comes to
mind? Is it a child, an adult, an animal, a fantasy character like Grendel?
Children should be encouraged to have lots of time to sketch and re-sketch ideas until they come up
with a character that they are happy with.
Sketching ideas
When planning and developing ideas for picture book narratives, children may wish to approach the process
in different ways and should be supported to do so. Some children, like some authors, may think of the words
in writing first and then the images that will accompany them. Others may think of the pictures first before
composing accompanying text and others will work with a combination of the two.
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In the same group, ask the children to think again about the structure of the story.
Grendel is a long picture book, and this may need to be simplified for children in EYFS. This could
look something like:
o Introduce the character and the setting
o Give the character three wishes – what happens?
o What is the disaster?
o How is it resolved – through one last wish?
Model to the children how to sketch out ideas in illustrations creating the setting, the wish and the
disaster moment that happens. Model what words might come on each page.
Give plenty of time and space for the children to talk about their own ideas. The children could be
encouraged to draw at the same time. An adult can scribe their conversations and suggestions.
Encourage the children to share their ideas in turn to the class for them to comment on what they
liked about each other’s ideas. Use prompts to support articulation of evaluations: I liked...
because... Model this for the class.
Bookmaking
Publishing their work for an audience helps children to write more purposefully. Bookmaking provides a
©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.
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. The decisions that all
writers have to take and the processes of redrafting, editing and punctuation can be demonstrated and
discussed as teachers and children write together in shared writing.
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In a large-scale made book, share writing the children’s story, with you scribing the words composed by
the class.
As you scribe, talk with the children about the language and the patterns, and shape of the story. Write
each ‘episode’ on a separate sheet for children to illustrate with large pictures or paintings afterwards.
Encourage the children in each group to share their own made books with different children and adults
in the setting. They can swap books, read each other’s stories and share their opinions on them. This
should be a positive experience, so you may want to model this with another adult responding to your
book with what they liked about the story and illustrations first.
Give lots of time for them to share with a number of different people.
Display the books prominently in the class reading area, library or an appropriate communal space so
that they can be shared with and enjoyed by a wider audience.
Have some pre-made paper books available as part of the continuous provision so that children can draw
and write their own versions.
Other ideas to use across the curriculum:
Understanding the World:
 Revisit the part of the story where Grendel’s mum begins to melt. Ask the children why they think this
happened? Look at a bar of chocolate. What do the children think they will need to do to make this
chocolate melt? What do they think they will need?
 Ask the children what they could use the melted chocolate for.
 Talk about food hygiene and safety alongside vocabulary like pour, stir, mix etc.
 In groups, children go on to make their own batches of Rice Krispie cakes. Ensure adults are there to
melt the chocolate and supervise.
 Take photographs of the different stages.
 As a class put the photographs of the cooking steps to make an illustrated recipe card of the ingredients
and cooking process. Using shared writing write captions under each photo.
 Children can go on to make their own cards and take these home to repeat the cooking experience with
their families.
Expressive Arts and Design:
 David Lucas is heavily influenced by the pattern in Folk Art and the Arts and Crafts movements. As part
of the sequence you may wish to explore Folk Art as part of your work in line with the sequence.
 Tate Britain has a section on Folk Art http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/britishfolk-art
 The V&A museum has a style guide for the arts and crafts movement:
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/s/style-guide-arts-and-crafts/
 You may wish to give children a range of opportunities for exploring and working with pattern, using a
range of media, influenced both by what they have seen in David Lucas’s work across his texts and in
examples from both of these artistic movements. This could include painting, sculpture, printmaking and
inks on paper.
©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.
This is a Power of Pictures teaching sequence. The Power of Pictures is a whole school development project
run by the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education and funded by the Arts Council. The project offers
participants the opportunity to work alongside a highly regarded author/illustrator to explore the creative
processes involved in the making of a picture book. It combines an introduction to high quality picture books
for teachers and children with an approach to teaching the English curriculum that is creative, engaging and
develops an appreciation of art and picture books as a vital part of children’s reading repertoire, no matter
what their age. Find out more about Power of Pictures on the CLPE website www.clpe.org.uk
©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.