Homework

Students could write a diary entry from the point of view of any character other than Ted.

OHT 8

What do you see?

LESSON 9

Focus:Chapters 24–32

Plot development

Learning outcomes

Students will be able to:

Work as part of a group to solve a problem

Consider how the same story might be presented and told in different media

Use purpose and audience to focus their ideas

Engage

Remind students of Chapter 20, and how Ted and Kat are trying to decipher the words on the strange man’s shirt. Ted sees this as a kind of word game. Hand out WS9, which has a number of similar word games, and ask students to work in groups to try to figure them out. How many can they solve?

Answers: 1. small talk; 2. tongue in cheek; 3. weather forecast; 4. round of applause; 5. top secret; 6. I understand; 7. three blind mice (no i’s/eyes); 8. summary

Explore

Read Chapters 24 and 25 as a class. In these chapters, Ted solves the mystery on the T-shirt and the television crew also arrive at the Spark household to film Salim’s parents.

Tell the class that the job of a journalist can be similar to that of a detective. Journalists also need to be able to take a collection of information and build a bird’s eye view of it as a whole, and then present this to their readers.

Ask students to think of the different kinds of journalism that they have encountered. For example:

newspapers and tabloids

radio

television news

online.

How do these different types of news reporting differ? Compile a list of the features of each, reminding students to think about purpose and audience.

Then ask the class to consider how the different media might report the story of Salim’s disappearance. For example, a newspaper report might focus on the fact that a young boy had gone missing, while a tabloid might focus on the mystery of the London Eye, or the fact that his parents had not been with him at the time. A television report may give the most time to the statement by Salim’s parents. Students should try to come up with as many different ‘angles’ on the story as they can.

Transform

Students will now work in groups to prepare one of three news reports on Salim’s disappearance (alternatively you could choose one of these conventions for the whole class to work with).

Group 1: Students write a traditional news report. They will need to include: a title summing up the story; the 5Ws (who, what, where, when, why); short quotations from the police or from Salim’s parents’ statement; paragraphs organized cohesively; clear, informative writing; formal language.

Group 2: Students perform a news broadcast (this combines the skills of reporting and drama). They could write this as a script, including a report for the student/s acting as news anchor to read, while other members of the group act out scenes such as the parents’ statement. As with the newspaper report, they will need to answer the 5Ws, and the story should be clear and cohesive.

Group 3: Students write a tabloid news story. They will need to include: a sensationalist headline; the 5Ws; biased and emotive language; images; less formal language. Remind students that the purpose here is to entertain as well as inform readers.

Review and reflect

Tell students they are nearing a point in the novel where they will discover the answers to the mystery. What do they think happened to Salim? You could go back to Ted’s eight theories and evaluate these again, or ask students to come up with their own theories, based on what they have learned.

Homework

Independent reading of Chapters 26–32.

Worksheet 9

Word games

talk

CHETONGUEEK

1. ______________________________

2. ______________________________

CAST

CAST

WEATHER CAST

CAST

3. ______________________________

4. ______________________________

Secret

Secret

Secret

Secret

Secret

STAND

____________

I

5. ______________________________

6. ______________________________

M CE

M CE

M CE

MARY

+MARY

_______

_______

7. ______________________________

8. ______________________________

LESSON 10

Focus:Chapters 33–37

Themes/Plot pivot

Learning outcomes

Students will be able to:

Retrieve and consider ideas from the text about key themes in the story

Explore structural devices used by the author

Infer information from the text about characters and events

Engage

Remind students of the lesson on idiomatic language (Lesson 2), and how this is something Ted struggles to understand. WS 10aprovides a fun card activity for students to match weather idioms with their meanings. Once the activity is complete, encourage students to use the phrases in context/sentences.

Explore

Explain that weather is something that comes into The London Eye Mysteryfrequently, because Ted is the narrator and he has an obsession with weather. Sometimes he uses idiomatic expressions to describe how he or other characters act and feel, but he often draws on his own extensive weather knowledge and draws parallels of his own. For example, in Chapter 26, Ted compared Salim going off-course from his plan with the Coriolis Effect.

This feature of the novel is reflected in Siobhan Dowd’s use of chapter headings, many of which are related to weather. These are used as signposts, to link the weather name with events in the chapter. Ask students to go through the novel up to Chapter 32 and write down all the headings related to weather they can find, as well as how each heading links to events in that chapter.

The full list is: Chapters 2, 3, 4, 13, 16, 17, 23, 26, 29, 31, and 32.

Transform

Read Chapters 33–37.

Explain to students that, throughout the novel, we have been trying to solve the London Eye Mystery – how Salim managed to board the London Eye and then disappear. These chapters are the climax of the novel, showing us exactly what happened and answering our questions. All the clues found in the novel are brought together. Ask students to reflect again on how the author has maintained suspense and interest throughout, by feeding these clues slowly to the reader, and leaving many questions unanswered.