Cogheart

Cogheart by Peter Bunzl

Lily’s life is in mortal peril. Her father is missing and now silver-eyed men stalk her through the shadows. What could they want from her?

With her friends – Robert, the clockmaker’s son, and Malkin, her mechanical fox – Lily is plunged into a murky and menacing world. Too soon Lily realizes that those she holds dear may be the very ones to break her heart…

Murder, mayhem and mystery meet in this gripping Victorian adventure.

Main Focus: Powerful Verbs

This literacy resource focuses on the prologue and powerful verbs. The activity allows your children to:

1.  Find synonyms

2. Explore powerful verbs.

3.  Re-write the passage, replacing the underlined verbs with more powerful synonyms to create an atmosphere of tension.

Main Focus: Character Development Lily

This resource focuses on character development and Lily from Chapter 1.

Your class will delve deeper into the character’s actions and thoughts, giving their impression, showing their understanding and reflecting on why this character would appeal to the readers.

Main Focus: Dashes

Dashes are a form of parenthesis and can be used to add extra information to a sentence (a bit like brackets).

The sentence has to make sense without the information between the dashes; it’s just a bit more interesting with the added detail.

‘He was leaving paw prints that could be easily traced – practically marking his route for them– he cursed the damp ground, the foul weather, the men, the airship, everything.’ p28

Your Ks2 class will give practice at adding in dashes to tell more information in these resources.

Main Focus: Balanced Argument

This activity is based on Chapter 7

Lily and Madame Verdigris have different opinions on the treatment of the mechanicals.  Your KS2 children will sort the opinions into the correct section of the table.

Their second task is to write a balanced argument to evaluate the opinion of both characters using the grid provided.

Main Focus: Missing Person Report

This resource is based on chapter 11 of the story Cogheart and the focus is a missing person report.

Have a look through the resources and see how we have structured  and differentiated the activity.

Main Focus: Pathetic Fallacy

Pathetic Fallacy is a form of personification where human emotions or characteristics are given to objects, nature or weather to mirror the mood of the story.

For example – smiling skies, sombre clouds, angry storm, bitter winter.

– What is the atmosphere created by each of the sentences below?

– The wild wind battered their faces.

– The cool breeze tickled their skin.

Your class will explore extracts and determine the associated moods and then rewrite sentences so that it mirrors the different moods of the events of the chapter.

Main Focus: Non Fiction - Comprehension

In this activity, your class will explore airships and and the Hindenburg disaster.

Your children will read the non fiction text and answer questions based on what they read.

Your class will also make comparisons between the Hindenburg and the Ladybird from the story.

Main Focus: Comprehension - Chapter 18

Your class will answer comprehension questions linked to chapter 18 of the story.

The comprehension is split into categories: vocabulary, retrieval and inference.

Main Focus: Negative Prefixes

This resource is based on chapter 23 of the story and negative prefixes.

un, in, il, im, ir, dis, non – these make nouns, verbs, adjectives negative, not opposite.

Some rules (but there are exceptions)

• use il-before words starting with l
• use ir – before words starting with r
• use im– before words starting with m, p and b

Your class will add the words in to complete the sentences and then  choose a word with a negative prefix and an event from the chapter and write a sentence including both.

Main Focus: Newspaper Reports

Your class have the task of writing a newspaper report on the crash of the Behemoth into Big Ben.

They will read chapter 25 and complete the activities.