Teachers or home-edders, help? - resources for literacy, esp. comprehension re well-known books

[Bink]

My ds (9 in April, yr4) is at a specialist school where the curriculum gets tailored to individuals, and as he's a good reader his reading books are currently modern-day classics (like Philip Reeve eg). We are meant to support this (as a sort of school/parent partnership) by doing comprehension type exercises with him at home, but whereas reading-scheme books tend to come with lots of suggestions for exercises and extension, of course your ordinary paperback doesn't.

There must be somewhere on the web which gives you ideas for discussions, exercises, etc. based on eg Alice in Wonderland, or similar "classic" books? Can you point me to anything like that?

www.teachit.co.uk

Hi Bink - not a teacher or home-edder, but just a Mumsnetter in an unsociable time zone with time on her hands!

Don't know if it is the case elsewhere, but book publishers here have got very savvy with reaching out to various potential audiences. One of the main ways, is to make it appealing for local Book Groups or neighbourhood Reading Clubs to select one of their books. To encourage readers to make that choice, fictional books are increasingly published with 'book club discussion points'.

A quick google of 'reading groups' or 'book clubs' provides an example:

www.randomhouse.com/vintage/read/tips.html

www.book-clubs-resource.com/running/discussion-questions.php

www.randomhouse.com/anchor/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781400078110&view=rg

www.readinggroupguides.com/guides_S/the_serpents_tale1.asp

Perhaps those sites (and others you can uncover by googling as I've suggested) can offer you some general discussion points that can be adapted to meet the needs of your ds. And who knows, perhaps you may even find questions/discussion points specifically written for some of the books he is reading/will read.

Hope that helps a bit. the books cited above as examples were selected entirely at random, and are not necessarily ones I would suggest as good reading group/book club choices!

Hurricane, thank you - amazing site.
And Earlybird, marvellous lateral thinking there!

Thank you both. I've got some ideas now for both Mortal Engines & Predator's Gold, & feeling much better about my job in this process.