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Gangsta Granny David Walliams

Gangsta Granny is a brilliant Year 5 / Year 6 English teaching resource featuring a series of engaging lessons designed to enhance and develop pupil knowledge and understanding of the novel Gangsta Granny by David Walliams.  Year 5 / Year 6 English Teaching Resources: Gangsta Granny by David Walliams includes a wide range of activities and lessons for children of all abilities.

- Making predictions about the characters and story

- Background information about David Walliams

- Empathetic writing as Ben

- Exploring characterisation - Ben and Granny

- David Walliams's use of vocabulary

- Writing an agony aunt letter as Ben about his life at home and in school and write a reply

- Using different types of sentences and apostrophes, pronouns, adjectives and adverbs

- Exploring key themes - loneliness, attitudes to the elderly, prejudice, family, childhood

- Discussion of events, characters and themes - using zone of relevance technique and conscience alley

- Writing in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person

- How to write a recount and how to write a letter

- Using the authoritative voice

- Writing to explain and writing a newspaper report

- Writing to instruct and writing to explain tasks

- Cross curricular - science (digestive system), geography (rivers and jewels) history (the crown jewels) PSHE (charities - Childline and Silverline, the highway code) history (Robert Peel and the police)

- 123 slide PowerPoint

- 26 pages of worksheets

- And a lot more!

The range of activities in this unit of work are intended to suggest opportunities around the novel Gangsta Granny by David Walliams. At least one copy of the novel will need to be used.  There are weblinks to extend and enrich pupil's learning and teachers will identify PSHE opportunities arising from these activities (Respect, Care for the elderly; Values and ethics; The Law)

There are specific activities to teach grammatical aspects of English but teachers will identify further opportunities which should be tailored to pupil’s needs. The whole unit of work could be completed in about 2 weeks, or extended to half a term’s work using the suggested links.

It is not intended to be a prescriptive unit of work where all activities are worked through slavishly, although it is structured chronologically. Teachers should select from, and adapt, these resources to meet the needs of the pupils they teach. There are some potentially sensitive issues explored throughout the story and teachers should make their own decisions about which elements to include. All the links to external sites are valid at the date of publication but should be checked before use.

In 2013, the BBC transmitted a 70 minute adaptation of this novel, which starred David Walliams as Ben’s father, and this could be used to enhance the study of this novel.

To preview Year 5 / Year 6 English Teaching Resources: Gangsta Granny (David Walliams) click on the images.

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