Cloud Busting: Puffin Poetry

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This is a fantastic story about friendship and how fractuous it can be as peer pressure begins to become a larger part of a child's life, all told in various poetry styles. This is one of the first novels in verse that I have ever read and an extremely powerful one at that.

If you are lucky enough to have a dry but cloudy day prior to starting the book, the opportunity for children to experience “cloud busting” for themselves is an ideal way to promote immediate engagement. The entire story is told through poetry – poetry of various types that seamlessly flow into each other. This ready-to-teach Cloud Busting KS2 lesson pack comes with a detailed plan, an engaging set of slides, differentiated activity ideas and printable resources. In their independent activities, children are challenged to predict what will happen next in the story, based on their knowledge and understanding of both the characters and the events so far. A moving story of bullying, complex friendships and power of peer pressure in causing misguided decisions.Throughout these six lessons, your class will become familiar with the main characters in the story. The story in the book was ok but not as interesting or exciting as some of the other books that I have read as part of the reading challenge. Personally I wasn’t excited by this book as the story itself is not complex but it’s structure is so interesting it would be great fun to explore with a class.

The narrator ends up in a completely different place at the end of the nine months and through it challenges all sorts of concepts of what is of interest and value in life, what does it mean to see things differently. A panel of judges work together to consider nominations from a range of people – including librarians and children – before making their final decision. It could be used for PHSE sessions but I have read it out loud to 3 different year 5 / 6 classes and they all got engrossed in the plot beyond the poetry.I really liked the way that it was written from Sam's point of view because it showed how much of a decision he had to make with his friends.