This comprehension crusher reading scheme pack includes two narrative poetry texts written by the very famous author, Lewis Carrol, who you’ll know as the author of Alice in Wonderland. As an author, he is well-known for his nonsense verse, which is included in his novels. Both poems used in this unit appear in the story, ‘Alice through the Looking Glass’.

The first nonsense poem, ‘Jabberwocky’ accompanies the teaching slides, with a focus on looking at nonsense words that appear in the poem, and getting you as the reader to interpret what you think they might mean – that is all the fun when reading nonsense poetry! This text is ideal to meet the Year 5 expected standard, where the focus reading domains are vocabulary, retrieval, and inference. The teaching slides focus on the question stems, linked to the content reading domains, so there is an opportunity for modelled, shared and independent practice. The questions are included and offer the opportunity for further discussion and teaching points with students.

The second text, also an example of nonsense poetry, depicts the narrative of the Walrus and the Carpenter, who meet on a beach and then decide to go for a walk, where they come across a group of oysters. The walrus persuades the oysters to join them for a walk, and then they meet their unfortunate ending when they get eaten.  Following on from the modelled text, this ‘unseen’ text allows students to practise and apply the skills of vocabulary, retrieval and inference independently, using the same reading domains they have been practising to use.

National curriculum objectives:

Year 5: pupils should be able to read aloud a wider range of poetry with accuracy, and answer comprehension questions with growing...