There are so many quotable moments in
the BFG. One of my favorites is, “Giants is also making rules. Their rules is
not suiting the human beans. Everybody is making is making his own rules to
suit himself.” This is a great line that can lead into a great lesson. You can
talk to students about respect and selfishness. There are so many different
character traits that lessens can be designed around like bullying, and you
talk about the BFG getting bullied by the other Giants.
Another character trait that you can talk
about is courage. Sophie wanted to tell someone about the giants so they could
not hurt or kill any more children. It took a lot of courage for the BFG to
trust Sophie with her plan to tell the Queen of England about the giants. The
Queen and the people of England could have turned against the BFG. Other people
besides Sophie, don’t know that he can be trusted to not eat anyone. Trust is
another big character trait because Sophie had to trust the BFG to not harm
her, and the BFG had to trust everyone else.
Besides character traits, I love the
imagination and creativity not only from the author, but from the characters he
created in this book. When the BFG and Sophie went to England to talk to the
Queen and the Queen invited them to eat breakfast the butler, Mr. Tibbs, used
his imagination. Mr. Tibbs used a grand piano, four clocks, and a ping pong
table to create a table for the BFG. I think that it would be a great lesson
for students to use their imagination to create a structure for a giant. This
would include math to figure out measurement, like “how tall would a table have
to be for a giant to eat at?”
For a teacher there are great lessons,
but for students it is a great book. The book would keep students interested, some
parts would make them laugh. While other parts will make them upset with the
consent bullying. There are so many great parts of this book that many students
would want to pick this book up again and again.
I really like your idea of using the BFG's custom table as a math lesson. That would be so creative and plus it would be fun to try to use class room items to do it as well, such as stacking desks or bookshelves. Obviously not in real-life but as a way to think about the resources available to our students.
ReplyDeleteI like that you also brought up the bullying portion of this story. I think a lot of kids don't see when bullying happens in literature but there are so many occurrences it would be great to point these out and ask how they would deal with those situations. Perhaps even role play ways to tell another how that hurts their feelings or makes them uncomfortable. This is just an all around amazing book in my eyes, I'm glad I'm not the only one who would use it for more lessons.
In regards to the imaginative and creativity in this book, I think it would be fun to do a creative writing lesson where students had to imagine the BFG in a public place that the student is familiar with. They would need to write about what the BFG would be like in that setting, any accommodations, any other funny scenes, etc. So kind of like the breakfast scene! I love that one! And I agree that respect is a great lesson from this book!
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