Giant's Necklace

Giant's Necklace

Michael Morpurgo

Giant's Necklace is a short story from Morpurgo's book Hereabout Hill. The story follows the adventures, or struggles, of a girl on her last day of holiday. It is a lovely story, short but not too short. I was able to use it within my year 6 placement class as a kickstart to a story writing topic. We spent a week teaching from Giant's Necklace as there are lots of different avenues you can cover with the story. It gives plenty of opportunities to explore inference and deduction as you read between the lines to guess the twist at the end, but most can only be spotted once you have read that ending. 

We were also able to use it to explore a range of descriptive language, such as personification, similes, metaphors and emotive language. As well as this, it gave some great opportunities for creative writing and idea forming, asking the children to discuss and think of what the story might be about from the title, and then from the break in the middle of the story.

Once we reached the ending of the story it was also good to explore some role playing and hot seating to discuss how each character is feeling.

The children really enjoyed the story, always wanting to hear more when we stopped at each cliff hanger.

 

Although short, there is plenty within the story to create a good amount of work and give you enough input to make you feel for the characters.

Overall, a great story with a gripping and shocking ending. The story is truly moving and a great one to work through with children.