The Bog Baby - Learning Sequence

The Bog Baby educational unit is a comprehensive learning sequence that spans over six weeks, aimed at nurturing literacy skills by exploring the enchanting story of The Bog Baby. In the first three weeks, students dive into the narrative by discussing unfamiliar vocabulary, which is then recorded in a class dictionary or displayed on a working wall. The journey begins with using visual cues from the book to stimulate oral responses and progresses to a Bog Baby hunt, encouraging students to think of synonyms and use time adverbs in their storytelling. As they read through the initial pages, the children engage in activities such as annotating illustrations with nouns and adjectives, setting up a reading and role-play area, and discussing the characters' actions and the Bog Baby's reactions. They also get creative by drawing and labelling their own Bog Baby and comparing it to human anatomy, enhancing their understanding of descriptive language and sentence structure.

Continuing the adventure into weeks four to six, the class delves deeper into the story's themes and characters. They read and discuss the mother's actions and the concept of real love, as well as the reasons behind the Bog Baby's behaviour. Students reflect on the narrative's moral lessons about caring for animals and the importance of freedom. Literary devices such as font size, bold print, and the presentation of the word 'magic' are analysed to uncover their significance within the text. The culmination of the unit involves creating a story map, retelling the story with time adverbials, and playing educational games to correct misconceptions. Additionally, the children compare the fictional world of The Bog Baby to real-life by researching pond and woodland animals, creating fact files, and contrasting the story with another book, The King of the Tiny Things, fostering critical thinking and preference articulation.