The Star-Spun Web

The Star-Spun Web by Sinead O'Hart

With her passion for scientific experimentation and her pet tarantula Violet, Tess de Sousa is no ordinary orphan. When a stranger shows up at Ackerbee’s Home for Lost and Foundlings, claiming to be a distant relative come to adopt her, Tess hopes to find some answers to her mysterious origins. But as she adjusts to her new life at Roedeer Lodge, it becomes clear that Norton F. Cleat knows more about Tess – and the strange star-shaped device left with her when she was abandoned as a baby – than he’s letting on. And when Tess discovers that the Starspinner is the gateway between her world and a parallel world in which war rages, she realizes she may be the key to a terrible plan. A plan she must stop at all costs..

by Goodreads

Main Focus: Rhetorical Questions - Prologue

This literacy activity is based on the prologue and rhetorical questions linked to The Star-Spun Web book.

Your Year 5 / Year 6 will explore the rhetorical questions used and then try to match up appropriate rhetorical questions with the extracts.

Main Focus: Comprehension - Chapter 2

This Year 5 / Year 6 reading resource explores the events covered in chapter two of The Star-Spun Web story.

This Ks2 comprehension focuses of vocabulary, retrieval and inference style questioning.

Have a look at the resources by scrolling through the images.

Main Focus: Ex- Spellings

The Prefix ex- usually means ‘out’ or ‘from’.

Sometimes another prefix, such as in-, can be added to the start of the word to change it to an opposite meaning. For example – extricable and inextricable

This resource encourages your Upper KS2 class to extend their vocabulary and place the ex- words into context.

Main Focus: Verb Tenses

This Ks2 literacy resource in based on chapter 5 of The Star-Spun Web book and verb tenses. Your Ks2 class will identify the tense of the sentences selected from the chapter.

This resource covers: Simple Tense, Perfect Tense and Progressive Tense and has been differentiated three ways.

Main Focus: Letter Writing - Chapter 6-8

Wilf is expecting a letter from Tess to arrive every day.  Imagine you are Tess and have written to Wilf to tell her all about your new home.

Use these extracts from chapters 6-8 and complete the activities.

Main Focus: Comprehension Chapters 19, 21 & 21

This Year 5 / Year 6 resource explores the events covered in chapters 19,20 and 21 of The Star-Spun Web book by Sinead O’Hart.

Main Focus: Character Development

This resource focuses on character development and is based on chapter 37 of the book by Sinead O’Hart.

Your class will delve deeper into character studies in this resource. The author uses many techniques to create character profiles and many of which are shown through actions.

Your children will answer the questions to reflect on different characters.

Main Focus: Non-Fiction Comprehension

This is a brilliant non-fiction comprehension resource to accompany chapter 21 of the story.

Main Focus: Dairy Writing

Millie has been one of Tess’s only friends at Roedeer Lodge.  In these chapters her character comes into focus as she strives to help Tess.  Your class are tasked to write a diary entry from Millie’s point of view.  Encourage your children to read the extracts to give them ideas and use the text in italics to begin each paragraph.

This resource is based on chapters 26 and 27.

Main Focus: Creating Tension

This resource is based on chapter 34 and highlights the techniques used by the author to create tension.

The resource explores: powerful  verbs, darkness, someone/something, short sentences and more.