Romans on the Rampage

Product Information

I would recommend this book to 8-10 year olds because younger may not understand some of the language in it.

I really enjoyed this book because it is really funny and adventurous it makes you want read more and more. To begin with I thought the book was excellent and I couldn’t wait to read more of Jeremy Strong’s books.

I wouldn’t have chosen Jeremy Strong but this book has definitely made me think different about this author. The key events in this book are about Scorcha the charioteer getting sent to prison on his big day of chariot racing. The aim of this new method is to expand pupils' vocabulary and deepen their understanding of the texts they are reading. Children have been doing them for years and so now we only use them when there is meaty content to be discussed.

Year 2 are struggling with whole class reading and I am trying to support the teacher as best I can.

Oliver: If you like chariot racing, daring stunts and drama then this is the book you should read next. We are continuing to have 30 minutes of quiet reading twice a week and are monitoring the books that pupils read. The characters are really fun and they get in to lots of trouble, especially Scorcha as he seems really clumsy! My favourite bit is when Maddasbanaus uses his fire engine to save the house because now, we use them so often but he would have invented and used one first.

I met with Jess, our Y5 leader who is in charge of reading, to discuss how to move forward with whole-class reading in our school.

My favourite character is Cati; Cati is a little girl and the stepbrother of the main character Marcus and the daughter of Dragonix who is English. That said, the book was weak in its plot and characters, it’s a series of farcical events happening to a range of oddball characters with funny Latiny names, my favourite being the slave Flippus Floppus - who reminded me of a certain general who ranks as high as anyone in Rome.

Jeremy Strong’s is good book for 11 and over because it has quite hard words in and you’ve got to keep up with the story because it adds on lots of information like words in Latin. This change was inspired by three things: the rigour of the 2016 reading KS2 test and the heavy focus on vocabulary for understanding, Reading Reconsideredby Doug Lemov, Colleen Driggs and Erica Woolway, and this blog post by Nick Hart.

I don't know if children would get the humour behind some of the names, such as Putupon and Septacemia. I really enjoyed this book because I love reading about the Romans and it is very exciting and has a lot of drama. When he was eighteen he started writing very serious stories for adults, but none of them were published. I like Croakbag because he is funny and never stops talking about biscuits, and also is very interactive with the audience in different parts of the story.