Tales, Texts & Thinking Caps! - Toroa (Year 7-8)

In the Toroa hub, students are diving into some awesome novel studies, exploring different books through fun and engaging activities. This term, each class is reading a different novel that gets them thinking, builds their vocabulary, and helps them understand storytelling and writing structures better. These novels include ‘The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy’, ‘Once’, ‘Holes’ and ‘Boy Overboard’. 

Students practise their fluency by reading aloud, paying attention to punctuation, expression, and phrasing. They participate in paired, group and whole class readings to enhance their fluency and confidence when engaging with complex texts. During these sessions, students analyse sentence structures and learn to break them down and consider how they can be used within their own writing. 

Comprehension activities encourage students to dive deeper into the novel. Through written responses and class discussions, they refine their ability to interpret texts critically. They analyze characters, themes, and plot, making predictions and connections to their own experiences. To develop vocabulary, students are learning to identify the different parts of words, developing strategies to identify their meaning, and how to use them within discussion and writing. 

Students are enjoying the novel studies and teachers are loving hearing students share their thoughts about each book. We look forward to delving deeper to find out what happens next!