Romans on the Rampage

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The book starts with a boy named perilous. He wants to take part in the most epic chariot race in all of Rome. But first, Croakbag , the smartest Raven in Rome, has to solve a mystery about who stole all the money from the bank. The robbery was planned by a man named Krysis & three other children, who successfully stole the money . But Croakbag tactically stopped them. Extra activity provided. Your class will list adjectives that would describe Crabbus and his wife, Septicaemia. My favourite character in his book is Croakbag because is always very funny, he loves saying he is the ‘cleverest raven in the world’, he really likes biscuits and he teaches you Latin every now and then through the book. You will love him! The family live across the street from a house where lots of poor Romans live together, because they cannot afford their own houses. Including two ex-slaves: Maddusbananus, who wants to be a millionaire from selling his inventions and Scorcha who shares Perilus’ ambition to become a charioteer. Perilus often sneaks out to the house across the road to practice chariot racing with Scorcha and some borrowed goats. Many disasters happen to the friends until one day Perilus is called upon to save the day while Scorcha is in jail. Jeremy Strong’s is good book for 11 and over because it has quite hard words in and you’ve got to keep up with the story because it adds on lots of information like words in Latin. I personally didn’t like the book but other people might. This book is a book that could help people learn a different language (bits of it). I don’t think this tells you a lot about history. It just says Latin words and about a chariot race. I don’t think it is very historical but some people might like reading it because they think it is fun.

We don't look at every word. If you look at the plans, you'll see we started with 20+ words per chapter but this became around 10 as we started teaching with the new approach. We don't feel we've lost anything by reducing how many RICs we do. Children have been doing them for years and so now we only use them when there is meaty content to be discussed. I really enjoyed reading this book because it is full of humour and is different to other books I have read. Wherever I get up to in the book it always wants to make me read on. This book also helps me learn a bit of Latin. My favourite character in this book is Croakbag / raven. I like Croakbag because he is funny and never stops talking about biscuits, and also is very interactive with the audience in different parts of the story. I wonder, did Romans invent skateboards? When he was about eighteen he started writing very serious stories for adults, but none of them were published. By the time he was twenty-one he was writing stories for children after realizing that he loved writing funny stories and making people laugh. The storm had uncovered some amazing Roman artefacts and we couldn’t wait to start finding out more about them!

Could I ask if you start this in year 2 or eyes? Year 2 are struggling with whole class reading and I am trying to support the teacher as best I can. Can it be done well in year 1?

I really enjoyed it I thought it was very funny. I liked the crow he was very amusing when he said "give us a biscuit". The history was very good and very realistic it felt like it was wrote as the author was there. It made me want to learn more about chariots and Roman soldiers and has inspired me to look at more books written by this author. Thanks for sharing this, Jo. I'm reading 'Reading Reconsidered' at the moment and am a fan of the close reading approach. Will give this approach a go with my year 6s in the next few weeks. Armistice Day: A Collection of Remembrance - Spark Interest and Educate Children about Historical Moments I really loved this book a lot. My favourite bit is when the trumpets go BLA bla-BLAAAA!! Is it realisticThis is an excellent book for people who like comedy. It also teaches you quite a few Latin words along the way. Moreover I really like how the author turned words like ridiculous and perilous into the characters’ names (Ridiculus and Perilus). My favourite characters are definitely Croakbag, the crow, and Scorcha, a famous charioteer. It really made me want to find out more about romans. I would definitely recommend this book to any 7-11 year old. I love this book because it makes you laugh and at the same time makes you wonder what is going to happen next. My favourite bit is when Maddasbanaus uses his fire engine to save the house because now, we use them so often but he would have invented and used one first. Do you look at all possible unknown words prior to reading a chapter or are some saved for word meaning/inference tasks in the second lesson? My favourite part was when they were racing in the chariots because one of the got kidnapped by two other people.