Into the Forest

By Anthony Browne

I have had the pleasure of collaborating with Jemima at her school and I am most appreciative of her willingness to share her teaching ideas. Jemima introduced me to this engaging story, another book for my bookshelf.

This story provides the perfect opportunity to …

Make a prediction using the blurb at the back of the book.
Label the nouns in an illustration and then ‘crack open the nouns’ by using an adjective.
What does poorly mean? Share your understanding.
Make connections with other texts, by finding out which stories the special guest characters appeared in originally
Ask questions, students can generate questions about the book before, during and after reading
Practise pausing at commas
Read the pictures, by searching in the background for interesting items, like beanstalks and bears
Analyse decisions made by the illustrator, including why some parts of the pictures are grey and some are coloured
Infer the character’s feelings by writing think bubbles for some illustrations
Compare texts by finding other books that use known characters in different ways (e.g. Stories about fairy tales told from a different characters’ point of view)
Retell the story by creating a story map to show the boy’s journey from his home through the forest to Grandma’s.

I have used this as a mentor text for …

Creating a simple opener to a story, by using the first sentence as a mentor sentence
Building mystery by looking at the start of the story (both pictures and text) to analyse how the characters feels about Dad not being around
Exploring punctuation. There is a wide range of punctuation in this text, can you make a tally?
Labelling because the boy creates notes and puts them around the house, like labels
Modelling dialogue between two characters
Innovating on a text and having known characters make special appearances, e.g. Goldilocks appears in a story

This is a great book is ideal to explore …

Shapes – go on a 2D and 3D shape hunt on each page
Fractions and measurement in a fruit cake recipe
The height of living things. Investigate the different heights of tress. Show your findings by representing the height of trees using wool or streamers.
Investigate the distance to travel to someone special in your family. Is it metres or kilometres?

Create artworks that have some black and white parts, and some coloured parts to add emphasis to parts of the picture
Create a diorama setting for a character to walk through
Explore perspective in drawings, particularly on the page when the boy hugs his grandma
Bake some treats to share with others in your community
Select one illustration from the text and role play what happened before and after the illustration
Shadows were evident in the illustrations. Go outside and explore shadows. Take photographs or draw images.
Make signs to display as Anthony did in this book.