Empathize with characters and explore their development

Act in role as one of the characters

Engage

This lesson gives students another chance to act as reading detectives.

Read Chapter 12 with the class, focusing on Ted’s five point code for reading faces. Because of his Asperger’s Syndrome, which makes Ted struggle to understand non-verbal communication, he uses this code to deducethe feelings of others. Remind students of the active reading strategies: infer and deduce. We deduce information from the evidence we find in a text (for example, if someone puts on a raincoat, we might deduce that it is raining outside). We make an inference by reading between the lines and guessing that something is probably true, based on what we know (in this case, we might infer that the person was prepared for bad weather).

Why are these strategies particularly important in this story? Elicit that, as a narrator, Ted is very literal, but that using inference and deduction, we are able to understand a lot more about what the other characters think and feel than Ted actually tells us. We get most of this information from what the characters do and sometimes what they say about one another (as documented by Ted). This device forces the reader to act as a reading detective (a concept they will be familiar with from earlier lessons) throughout the book, and adds to the engagement of the writing and the sense of The London Eye Mysteryas a modern whodunnit.

Ask students to suggest what they have already deduced and inferred about Aunt Gloria, Kat and Salim from their reading of the novel (if possible, they should provide textual evidence). Draw three spider diagrams on the board and add their suggestions to it.

Explore

Students will now take on a quick guided reading session ( WS 6aprovides guidance for this). It will probably be useful to divide them into groups, and to assign each a different chapter (Chapters 13, 14 or 15). Ensure each group has a copy of WS 6b.

At the end of the session, groups report back with a short summary of the chapter they have read, as well as information on what they have learned about the characters. Where relevant, add this information to the spider diagrams from earlier in the lesson.

Transform

Students will now perform a hot-seating activity, where they will take it in turns to perform the parts of Salim, Kat and Aunt Gloria while the rest of the class asks them questions. For Salim, they should answer questions at the point in the story where he is ready to board the London Eye, since we do not know what has happened to him subsequently. The students acting as Kat and Aunt Gloria can perform these roles from the end of Chapter 15, where the body has been found that is not Salim’s.

Model the activity by inviting students to ask you questions as one of the characters, and then hand over the hot seat to one of the students.

Review and reflect

Ask students to reflect on what they have discovered about Salim’s disappearance and the characters in the novel so far. What do they think will happen next?

Look over Ted’s theories. How likely or unlikely do students feel that each of the theories are? Do they have another theory about what happened to Salim? Remind them of Sherlock Holmes’s maxim: ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’

Homework

Ask students to go back to the social networking profiles they created in Lesson 3 and update them with the information they now have on each character.

Worksheet 6a

Guided reading plan: Lesson 6

Teaching intention

To consolidate inference and deduction.

To stimulate questioning as a strategy to increase engagement.

To support the students in making predictions.

Introduction

Divide students into groups and assign them one of the three chapters (13, 14 or 15). Inform them that they will be looking closely at the text for clues about the other characters in the novel, specifically Aunt Gloria, Kat and Salim (although they will also be able to infer knowledge about Ted and his father, for example). Hand out WS6bto each group and tell them that they will be using the worksheet to document their findings.

Strategy check

Check that students fully understand the terms ‘infer’ and ‘deduce’.

Check that students have a good knowledge of the events up until this point, and of the main characters in the novel.

Check that students understand the task. They will need to read their chapter before going on to discuss as a group what they can deduce and infer from the chapter and use this to complete the worksheet.

Independent reading

Students read their assigned chapters (13, 14 or 15) of The London Eye Mystery.

Return to the text

Students discuss the examples they have added to their worksheet and agree what each tells us about a particular character or the situation in general. They then come up with at least one of their own examples.

Review

Ask each group to report back to the class, both with a summary of the chapter they have read, and with their findings. Add the information uncovered about Kat, Aunt Gloria and Salim to the spider diagrams created during the starter activity (or draw new ones).

Worksheet 6b

Infer and deduce: Chapters 13–15

Clue from the text

What this tells us

LESSON 7

Focus:Chapters 16–19

Setting

Learning outcomes

Students will be able to:

Explore the setting of the novel and how this contributes to plot development

Use persuasive language and presentational features

Present their ideas

Engage

On the whiteboard, display a number of images of tourist London. If relevant, ask students who has visited London and what their impressions were. You could also ask them to complete the silhouette activity on page 11 of the Reading Guide.

Remind students of the importance of setting in every novel. Siobhan Dowd was born in London, but the rest of her books were set in Ireland, where her family had their roots. Of the four she wrote, only this one is focused on her birthplace. Why might Dowd have chosen London as an appropriate setting to help her tell Ted’s story? Students should consider the atmosphere of London, as well as the practical possibilities of having a character lost in a major city.

Explore

Of course, the other main reason Siobhan Dowd would have set The London Eye Mysteryin London is because of the London Eye itself. This iconic landmark is an ideal setting for Salim’s disappearance because it is so well known and also provides all the elements of the locked room mystery mentioned in Lesson 1.

Tell students that they will be working in teams to create a poster advertising the London Eye. Hand out copies of WS 7ato each team, which provides a detailed brief and explanation.