Boy at the Back of the Class - Lesson 1

The Boy at the Back of the Class

by Onjali Q Raúf

Year 6 - Term 3 Reading​

Lesson One

Open Ended

Based on just the cover and the title of the book, predict what you think this book will be about.

You can only use a maximum of 30 words and must explain your prediction.

You have 2 minutes

What questions would you want to ask Onjali Q Raúf?

Are the any words you need to clarify the meaning of?​

Onjali Q Raúf​

Onjali Q Raúf is a best-selling author. She is of Bangladeshi heritage and her work is informed in part by her experiences growing up including incidences of racism.

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The Boy at the Back of the Class is her debut (first) children's novel and uses her experiences of helping refugee families in refugee camps in Calais and Dunkirk.

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The Boy at the Back of the Class was first published in 2019 and won the Blue Peter Book Award for Best Story and the Waterstones Children's Book Prize in 2019.​

About the author

Draw

Using a safe search on the Internet, or the Atlas we have used in topic, can you locate and label the following countries:

> China

> England

> Syria

> Your home country

(If the map doesn't load, find out where the countries are on a world map on the Internet)

The Opening Paragraph​

​Read the opening paragraph of the book.

Read it through a couple of times to be prepared to answer the question on the next page.

Open Ended

INFERENCE / EVALUATING

You have just read the first paragraph of the book.

How does the Onjali Q. Raúf create suspense in the first paragraph? What do you think will happen?

Explain your answer.

​Read the next paragraphs of the first chapter

​On a piece of paper, list the things you are finding out about the narrator character and the setting.

Open Ended

INFERENCE

How does the author, Onjali Q. Raúf show the feelings of the narrator through their actions in the opening paragraphs?