(Continuation of the project: Let’s Read in English)
As the school year draws to an end, I thought I’d introduce my sixth-grade classes to this hilarious book with the hope that they would read it during the summer. I feel it is the perfect novel to get students reading in English.
The two main characters are a homeless man, Mr Stink and a twelve-year-old girl, called Chloe. It all starts when Chloe makes friends with Mr Stink, the local vagabond. Yes, he smells terribly. Indeed, on the first page of the book we can read: “"Mr Stink stank. He also stunk. And if it was correct English to say he stinked, then he stinked as well…” But when it looks like he will be run out of town, Chloe decides to hide him in the garden shed.
As Choe struggles to keep Mr Stink a secret, and her father tries to conceal a secret of his own, the stage is set for a momentous family confrontation. However, there’s one other person with an extraordinary secret – Mr Stink himself.
This book is for all ages, so once again I had two students from Eça de Queirós Secondary School, Bárbara Moreira dos Santos and Maria Miguel Campos Oliveira and their English teacher, Iris Seixas stop by to partake in this reading session.
First, students looked at an image of Mr Stink sitting on a bench and started brainstorming questions: “Who is he?”, “Where is he?”, “Why is he homeless?” and so on. Once all their questions had been put forward, we had a look at Chloe’s and compared the two sets of questions.
Students were then asked to speculate about Mr Stink’s past, this request really got the ball rolling as it spiked their curiosity and let their imagination run free. They were almost as creative as Chloe. Then, certain extracts were read from the book by the visiting students, their teacher and me.
The excerpts were not chosen at random, the first one had to with Chloe’s dislike of Christmas given that the last unit in the sixth-grade deals with celebrations and unlike Chloe, most of my students love Christmas. It was the perfect opportunity to revise vocabulary and learn new words related to this festivity. The second excerpt dealt with bullying and how Chloe felt because of it. Mr stink helps her ignore the bullies and gets her to think more highly of herself. Therefore, this excerpt was considered a must by me and the visiting teacher.
At the end of the lesson, I felt the book had captivated the students and had made them curious enough to want to carry on reading it.
Mission accomplished.
I hope this article will entice you to read the book, too.
Carla Seixas (professora de Inglês)
Projeto: Let’s Read in English
Sessão de leitura do livro: Mr Stink de David Walliams
No sentido de levar os alunos do sexto ano a lerem em inglês, na sexta-feira passada foi dada continuidade ao Projeto: Let’s Read in English com a leitura de excertos do livro: Mr Stink, escrito por David Walliams.
Esta atividade visava levar os alunos a lerem em inglês, aguçando-lhes a curiosidade quanto à personagem Mr Stink e sua jovem amiga, Chloe.
Foram lidos excertos do livro, não só por mim, como também pelas alunas Bárbara Moreira dos Santos e Maria Miguel Campos Oliveira da Escola Secundária Eça de Queirós e sua professora, Íris Seixas.
Com muita imaginação e algumas gargalhadas, foi possível despertar o gosto pela leitura deste livro em inglês, não só na aula, mas também em casa e quem sabe na praia durante as férias.
Carla Seixas (professora de Inglês)