Novel Ideas and Activities

This year, my class did 'Kensuke's Kingdom' as their novel. It was a real hit and here are some ideas that could be used for any class novel.

Design a book cover

Usually I get the children to do this after finishing the novel. It is a nice art activity to do. I download a book cover template on card for them and we discuss the elements of an effective book cover.

Letter to author

Rather than a book review, it can be nicer to use the medium of letter writing to show the author what you liked/disliked about the book. If you do decide to post them, you might be lucky and get a response!

Diary entry

Choose a specific part of the book and a character and ask the children to write a diary entry about what is happening. For Kensuke's Kingdom we used cold teabags to give them an old appearance.

Questions for main character

This can be a fun activity as we are usually the ones asking the questions rather than the children.
   

It can lead on nicely to the next idea:

Hot seat character

Choose a student to assume the role of a character. The other children then question them on various topics that arise in the novel.

News Report

In this, the children could create a news report for a main event in the novel. For example, in Kensuke's Kingdom we created a news report announcing that Michael was missing. The children can also record the news reports incorporating ICT.

Debate

We were doing persuasive writing this term so debating (either written or oral) is a great activity to do with novels. We choose specific points of the novel and debated the various pros and cons.

Chapter Activity Sheets

I designed some activity sheets that I used for some chapters. It includes the strategies of prediction, visualisation, summarising as well as vocabulary and character study.

Create a model/diorama of favourite scene

Another art idea where the children could select a scene from the novel and create a 3D representation or a clay model.

Design a comic strip of favourite scene

Again, a nice art activity. I choose a scene in the book and asked the children to illustrate what each character might be thinking or saying at that particular time.

Create a quiz

A fun way to assess their knowledge of the novel is to get the children to create a quiz. It is also a nice way to peer assess. Why not get the children to use ICT (maybe Powerpoint) to create an interactive quiz?

   



Alter the Ending

The children could write an alternative ending to the story or continue on the story to show what might happen next.

Letter to a character in the future

Imagine the book fasts forwards 10 or 20 years. Write a letter as if you are a character in the book writing to another character.

Create a wordsearch/crossword based on story

This is a nice way to summarise keys words and vocabulary from the novel. A wordsearch may be easier for younger classes or challenge them to create a crossword for their partner.

Character Profile

I gave the children a blank template to draw a character as they imagine them to look like. They also add some adjectives to describe the character and explain why they chose those specific ones.

 

Dramatise/mime a scene

Put the class in groups and assign a part of the novel to each group. They can dramatise it or mime the part while the rest of the class try to figure it out.

Create Movie Music

I asked my children to imagine the novel is being made into a movie. Using instruments or body percussion they create music for a particular scene.

Sense Response

Using a chapter in the book the children created a senses page and listed all the senses that the chapter appealed to. For example the waves crashing may appeal to the sense of hearing and sight.

I hope this gives you some ideas for studying novels. Feel free to comment with some other ideas below.


Here are a few that relate directly to Kensuke's Kingdom:

This was an art lesson inspired by Michael in the cave. The children used oil pastels and black paper for the cave.

  

 The children designed a map of the island based on what they imagined it to be like.

Missing Posters