Reading "Lamb to the Slaughter"

Reading Roald Dahl’s “Lamb to the Slaughter”

Curriculum goals:

• use a wide selection of digital and other aids independently, including monolingual dictionaries

• master a wide vocabulary

• extract essential information from spoken and written texts and discuss the author's attitudes and point of view

• express himself/herself in writing and orally with subtleness, proper register, fluency, precision and coherence

• select appropriate listening, speaking, reading and writing strategies adapted to the purpose, situation and genre

• take initiatives to start, finish and keep a conversation going

• read formal and informal texts in various genres and with different purposes

• write formal and informal texts with good structure and coherence on personal, interdisciplinary and social topics

• analyse and discuss a film and a representative selection of literary texts in English from the genres poetry, short story, novel and drama

• discuss a selection of literary texts in English from various regions of the world and different periods from the 1500s up to the present

Pre-reading activities:

Who was Roald Dahl and which of his stories are familiar to the students?
Give the students the first paragraph of the story. Make them read the paragraph together, underline difficult words and find explanations. Then let them decide what this story is about. All the groups should try to make a plot summary of “their story” which they can present to the rest of the class.

Reading the story:

Read the first paragraphs together in class.
After having read the third (second paragraph), make the students write a description of Mary Maloney. What is she like, what is it in the text that tells us so? Include quotes from the text to illustrate.
Read until the line: It wasn’t till then that she began to get frightened.
Ask the students to answer the following questions individually:

The students are to share their ideas and answers with their shoulder partners before we talk about them in class.
Read as far as Mary Maloney didn’t know. And she certainly wasn’t prepared to take a chance.
Let the students come up with ideas as to how she can escape getting caught and punished for the crime she has committed.
Read the rest of the story individually before answering the questions under:

We are never actually told what Patrick tells Mary when he comes home that night. What do you think he tells her? What in the text makes you think so? Use quotes to illustrate.
Why was this a bad time for Patrick to tell Mary this?
What is the setting of the story? Where and when does the story take place? What in the text makes you think so? Use quotes to illustrate.
What do you make of the title of the story?