The Tunnel: 1

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Look at the body language of the children in the illustrations. What does it tell us about how they are feeling? Can you ‘act’ different emotions by changing your body language / facial expressions? The Tunnel by Anthony Browne is a very interesting book. It tells the story of a brother and sister who argue all the time, when their mother sends them out to play together and they discover a tunnel, their relationship is changed forever. The brother, whose name we do not find out until the end, crawls through the tunnel ignoring of his sister’s protests, and ends up in a magical forest. When her brother does not return, Rose follows him into the tunnel and finds him turned to stone.

Resemblance in picture quality is equal if not better within this book, setting the spooky scenes in which the story experiences. This is a short, sweet story written by a ten -year-old child. The suspense and mystery are created from the second sentence and the author goes on to unfurl the mystery as the story continues. I would use this story towards the end of my lesson (or series of lessons) to encourage the children to put into practice what we have been learning. I would read the story to the children, pausing after the second sentence to ask them to predict what might happen. On completion of the story I would ask the children to discuss the aspects of the story that they enjoyed. Then, as a class, we would discuss the tips we would offer the author to improve the story. We would then use this text almost as a shared write to model editing our written work, using the children’s suggestions. This is an adventure story about a brother and sister who do not get along. It is their journey through adversity that brings them closer together. The Tunnel would be a great story to read aloud to a class, particularly when studying adventure stories. There are lots of opportunities in the book to pause and ask inference questions of your class. It also follows a structured adventure story model and therefore would be an excellent text to use for writing. During our SBC3 summer planning tasks our group used the The Tunnel as a text to accompany our writing lessons on adventure stories. Read the words used to describe the inside of the tunnel. Can you think of any more words that might be suitable?

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Look at the strange textures and images on the illustrations of the tree trunks. What can you see on them? The story promotes thought, emotion and the importance of family/friendships. Using this in the recommended key stage 2 classroom could allow an excellent weekly topic using cross curricular links in Literacy, RE, PSHE and Geography.

Anthony Browne is a highly acclaimed and well loved children’s author and illustrator. He was the Children’s Laureate 2009-11 Write a new story with the title ‘The Tunnel’. Who are the characters? Where does the tunnel lead to?

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The brother and sister argue a lot. Think about why arguments are caused. How can we help to resolve problems with our friends and family when they occur? Look at the photos of different tunnels (see Resources below). Choose one and write about it… what does it look like? Where does it lead? Could you write an adventure story about it? Look at the objects on the waste ground. Could you write a story which explains how they got there? Look at examples of tunnels. How have they been constructed? What techniques do people use to make sure that they are strong and safe?

The brother and sister are different ‘in every way’. Think about how you are similar / different to your friends and family.

The girl struggles to decide whether to go into the tunnel or not. Can you think of reasons for / against entering it? The brother gets turned into stone at one point in the story. Could you sculpt a model (of a person or another object) using clay / plasticine?