Malamander

Malamander by Thomas Taylor

We’ve had the pleasure of working with Thomas in our short story “No Man’s Land’ and we are pleased to have created resources for his AMAZING book Malamander.

It’s winter in the town of Eerie-on-Sea, where the mist is thick and the salt spray is rattling the windows of the Grand Nautilus Hotel. Inside, young Herbert Lemon, Lost and Founder for the hotel, has an unexpected visitor. It seems that Violet Parma, a fearless girl around his age, lost her parents at the hotel when she was a baby, and she’s sure that the nervous Herbert is the only person who can help her find them. The trouble is, Violet is being pursued at that moment by a strange hook-handed man. And the town legend of the Malamander — a part-fish, part-human monster whose egg is said to make dreams come true — is rearing its scaly head.

Main Focus: Front Cover Analysis

In this resource we have included a blank resource for your class to complete and a reference resource for the teacher.

Your class will look deeper into the illustrations and question why certain objects, colours and styles have been used, and what deductions they can make in regards to the story and theme.

Remember, the children have the opportunity to use their imaginations and knowledge to make deductions, it might be useful to revisit this at the end of the story and see how close their deductions were.

Main Focus: Characters P12-P18

Your KS2 class will read the chapter, The Grand Nautilus Hotel and answer the following questions about the characters.

Your Year 5 / Year 6 class will deepen their understanding of the characters: Herbie, Mr Mollusc, Boathook Man and the girl after reading pages 12-18 of the book Malamander.

Main Focus: Comprehension P74-P79

This is a comprehension that encourages your class to answer and range of questions linked to pages 74-79 of Malamander.

We have differentiated this resource to cater for both Year 5 and Year 6 classes and categorised the questions.

Your class will explore retrieval, inference and vocabulary based questions, and answer using their knowledge, understanding and comprehension skills.

Main Focus: Vocabulary Extension - P61-67

This resource covers some of the lovely vocabulary used by Thomas Taylor from pages P61-67.

it includes words such as acrid, orientate, judders, iridescent, engulfed to name but a few. Your class will look at definitions and place the words into the sentences given, in the context of the story.

Main Focus: Punctuation - P110

This is a punctuation activity that encourages your class to complete the paragraph taken from page 110 of the book Malamander.

Main Focus: Inference - P1

This activity is linked to inference and pages 138-146, Chapter: Close Encounter.

Your class will read the chapter and reflect on and complete the inference style questions using their knowledge and understanding.

We have also included a true or false activity sheet as part of this resource, to cater for all Year 5 / Year 6 abilities.

Main Focus: Spelling - Pages 225-235

This is a spelling activity that cover the following words: guarantee, through, surprisingly, embarrassed, doubt, probably, special and though.

You will read out the sentences to your class and they will add in the missing words, focusing on the spelling.

You can also complete the second activity that encourages your class to use the appropriate words to complete the sentences.

The final pages is a multiple choice activity, whereby your class will choose the correct spelling.

Main Focus: Comprehension – p266-273

This is another comprehension resources linked to the chapter ‘A Window to the Past’.

It is broken into question categories for your class to answer.

Main Focus: Similes (Whole Book)

Main Focus: Author Study - Thomas Taylor

This is a non-fiction resource linked to the author Thomas Taylor and includes comprehension questions linked to the text.