I loved teaching Onjali Raùf’s The Boy at the Back of the Class to my Year 5 group. When an empty chair is taken by Ahmet, the narrator thinks he’s a little strange, not least because he doesn’t like sherbet lemons! But the more that the narrator and her friends learn about Ahmet, the more they realise that he’s not strange at all. In fact, he’s a refugee who has run away from a war and the narrator and her friends want to know how they can help. This free audiobook guide to The Boy at the Back of the Class is available as an online or printable resource and explores the key themes of the story, and helps your child practise retrieving information and writing from different perspectives.
The free guide includes both comprehension and creative writing tasks linked to the audiobook of The Boy at the Back of the Class (currently free with a Spotify Premium subscription). The discussion questions here are really important; being able to grasp the tricky political and social implications of this storyline are not just important for understanding the story, but also for understanding the wider world that we live in. Discussion of current affairs, but also themes of tolerance and acceptance, could be an interesting conversation point in an school interview.
The free guide also includes a set of multiple choice retrieval questions with answers. A surprising number of marks are lost on these questions as children are keen to rush through and tackle longer written answers, so encourage them to read all of the options (A-E) before making their selection.
The creative writing task in this free audiobook guide focuses on perspective. Being able to write from an unexpected perspective is a stylistic choice that would be well rewarded if employed effectively. These two tasks, centred around Chapter 1 of The Boy at the Back of the Class ask your child to write from points of view they might not have otherwise considered, and give hints as to what each of these narrators might focus on.
For more free resources, or to find out more about how I can support you and your child on your 11+ journey, click the link below.
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