The Tear Thief

The Tear Thief by Carol Ann Duffy

Each night, in the hours between supper and bedtime, the Tear Thief carries her waterproof, silvery sack as she steals the tears of every child who cries. But what does she do with all those tears? This warm, poignant, and beautifully illustrated story offers a thought-provoking message and a starting point to share children’s emotional experiences.

Main Focus: Word Mat & Cloze Activity

This is a word mat and close activity. Your Year 2 class will use the words to complete the sentences and your Year 1 class can use the pictures to stick into the correct place to complete the sentences.

You could also use the word mat in unaided writing as a reference point.

Main Focus: Capital Letters and Full Stops

This resource linked to Th Tear Thief focuses on punctuation.

Your Ks1 class will add in the capital letters and full stops to complete the sentences.

This resource focuses on simple sentences for Year 1 and more complex for Year 2 children, but four resources have been included to find the resource best suited for your class and groups.

Main Focus: Alphabetical Order

Your Year 1/2 class will work on their skills at placing words into alphabetical order in this activity.

The resource has been differentiated for all of KS1 so scroll through the images to see our resource on alphabetical order.

Main Focus: Phonics

This resource focuses on phase 3, phase 4, phase 5 and phase 6 phonics.

Your KS1 class will read the passage and locate the sounds within words.

We have also included a resource to allow your class to choose sounds of their own.

Main Focus: Questioning

In this activity your class will work on asking questions.

We have created a range of answers to various questions about The Tear Thief book and your class must use the information in the answer to formulate a question.

Main Focus: Vocabulary Extension

We have taken some fantastic vocabulary from the story for your class to explore.

Main Focus: Word Class

In this literacy resource, your class must read the passage and identify nouns, verbs and adjectives.

We have differentiated the resource to help some groups to complete the activity effectively.

Main Focus: Adjectives

This activity focuses on completing the passage by adding adjectives using the word bank.

We have also included a resource that encourages your class to think of their own adjectives.

Main Focus: Story Sequencing

In this activity, your class must read the passages and place the events into the order in which they happened in the story.

This is a great activity to complete once the story of The tear Thief has been read to your class.

It might be useful to allow some children to cut out the events, arrange and rearrange should they need to.

Main Focus: Comprehension

This is a comprehension resource that should be completed once your have read the entire The Tear Thief book with your KS1 class.

We have created four different resources for this comprehension to cater for Year 1 and Year 2 classes.