Use the ideas below, either on Roald Dahl Day or another time, to put it at the heart of your creative lesson planning for KS2… Preparing to read body erect, and by the look of things I figured that Mr Coombes was in for a hard time. About an hour later, my mother returned and came upstairs to kiss us all goodnight. ‘I wish you hadn’t done that,’ I said to her. ‘It makes me look silly.’ ‘They don’t beat small children like that where I come from,’ she said. ‘I won’t allow it.’ ‘What did Mr Coombes say to you, Mama?’ ‘He told me I was a foreigner and I didn’t understand how British schools were run,’ she said. ‘Did he get ratty with you?’ ‘Very ratty,’ she said. ‘He told me that if I didn’t like his methods I could take you away.’ ‘What did you say?’ ‘I said I would, as soon as the school year is finished. I shall find you an English school this time,’ she said. ‘Your father was right. English schools are the best in the world.’ ‘Does that mean it’ll be a boarding school?’ I asked. ‘It’ll have to be,’ she said. ‘I’m not quite ready to move the whole family to England yet.’ So I stayed on at Llandaff Cathedral School until the end of the summer term. When the boys took the dead mouse into the shop, Mrs Thwaites didn’t know what they were planning. This idea – that some characters know what’s going on while others don’t – provides uncertainty and tension, which make a story interesting.

a b c d e f g h i j k l Korkis, Jim (February 23, 2011). "How Basil Saved Disney Feature Animation: Part One". USA Today. Archived from the original on July 12, 2014 . Retrieved June 22, 2016.When writing about oneself, one must strive to be truthful. Truth is more important than modesty. I must tell you, therefore, that it was I and I alone who had the idea for the great and daring Mouse Plot. We all have our moments of brilliance and glory, and this was mine.

Read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Who can dream up the most outrageous and imaginative sweets? “I have a picture in my mind…” For Alfhild, Else, Asta, Ellen and Louis An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details. This is not an autobiography. I would never write a history of myself. On the other hand, throughout my young days at school and just afterwards a number of things happened to me that I have never forgotten. None of these things is important, but each of them made such a tremendous impression on me that I have never been able to get them out of my mind. Each of them, even after a lapse of fifty and sometimes sixty years, has remained seared on my memory. I didn’t have to search for any of them. All I had to do was skim them off the top of my consciousness and write them down. Some are funny. Some are painful. Some are unpleasant. I suppose that is why I have always remembered them so vividly. All are true. R.D. The Matchbox Diary by Paul Fleischman and Bagram Ibatoulline – a grandfather tells the story of his life One day, when we lifted it up, we found a dead mouse lying among our treasures. It was an exciting discovery. Thwaites took it out by its tail and waved it in front of our faces. 'What shall we do with it?' he cried.

Taking it further…

Once you have some data you can decide how best to present it, and write reports on what you did and why, and what you’ve learned. Taking it further… A dead mouse, in a gobstopper jar? Even the boys who planted it had to wonder whether they’d gone too far. And that was before the shopkeeper complained to their headmaster! Thus everything was arranged. We were strutting a little as we entered the shop. We were the victors now and Mrs Pratchett was the victim. She stood behind the counter, and her small malignant pig-eyes watched us suspiciously as we came forward. Remind your class about autobiographies and explain that this story is taken from Roald Dahl’s autobiography, Boy. How does Dahl’s story compare with the memory-stories your children worked on earlier? Cross-curricular opportunities What else could the boys have done and how might Mrs Thwaites have reacted? Perhaps she had a plot of her own?