JAMES and the GIANT PEACH Mini Posters with Parts of Speech​,​ Definitions and Text Extracts

You will develop vocabulary when reading James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl when you use these posters because of their multiple uses. There are 36 pages with six per page (216 mini posters). They are arranged by chapters, except some chapters are combined.

Each poster has a discreet label for organisational purposes. The target word is obvious, followed by the part of speech category it belongs to in the context of the story. I have added an explanation for adjectives and adverbs because I have found my students get confused by these terms more than any other. There are two interjections.

The definition has been refined to reflect the meaning intended by the author (my interpretation), and the extract from the story will contribute to comprehension and retention to extend vocabulary. Use them for writing prompts to encourage this level of extension.

When I know parents want to be involved I send them home for homework after I have used them for explicit teaching. This level of repetition has been effective. I ask parents to display the mini poster and ask their child what the word is as often as possible. It works. When they bring the mini posters back and I test them again after some time, the words have been retained and the meaning is understood. It's easier for me to do in intervention, but you may be able to arrange something similar in the regular classroom if you have the resource base. That would be a better inclusion technique than mine!

I have arranged them (more or less) in groups of five chapters, i.e., 30 vocabulary words. This arrangement has been used for my other supporting resources for James and the Giant Peach.

The words used are:

Ch.1: peacefully, vast, selfish, wistfully, ramshackle, desolate

Ch. 2: hideous, radiant, oozing, overwhelmed, laurel, unhappiness

Ch. 3: peculiar, emerging, bristly, beckoning, musty, luminous

Ch. 4: furiously, churning, froth, gulp, unbelievable, miserable

Ch. 5: precious, burrowed, scrabbling, pulpy, wheeze, vanished

Ch. 6: blossom, miserable, mistaken, blazed, bulging, peculiar

Ch. 7: absolutely, extraordinary, cautiously, hallelujah, spellbound, prey

Ch. 8: wildfire, countryside, scrambling, marvel, crafty, seething

Ch. 9: trembling, spindly, dazzling, towering, glinting, mysterious

Ch. 10: knelt, murky, curious, bittersweet, agog, bolt

Ch. 11: reclining, intently, scarlet, magnificent, famished, glassy

Ch. 12: disagreeable, broadly, approval, withering, scornful, hysterics

Ch. 13: complicated, ambled, gossamer, suspended, drowsily, shimmered

Ch. 14: depart, repulsive, lurching, venomous, insidiously, dilemma

Ch. 15: jostling, lifeless, frantically, struggling, panicked, visible

Ch. 16: plunging, serenely, stampeding, oozing, destruction, bungalows

Ch. 17: indescribable, promptly, disentangle, chaos, chorused, vertically

Ch. 18: bibbling, awkward, perish, gloomy, affectionately, scrumptious

Ch. 19: anxiously, assuming, perambulator, pathetically, anxious, pandemonium

Ch. 20: threshing, ludicrous, coaxing, martyr, wheeling, preposterous

Ch. 21: genius, scuttled, wailed, captain, applies, depend

Ch. 22: innocently, exhorting. tethered, harnessed, majestically, captured

Ch. 23: literally, frail, mammoth, ascent, distinctly, churned

Ch. 24: inferior, scornfully rambunctious, incredible, precisely, encore

Ch. 25: essential, vital, modestly, trifle, absence, decent

Ch. 26 & 27: teetering, brink, menacing, overwhelming, evidently, infuriated, stealthy, wispy, wraithlike, stammered, salami, loathsome

Ch. 28: monstrous, scuttling, enthralled, brilliance, malevolently, flabbergasted

Ch. 29: wretched, encased, gurgling, detest, permanently, proposal

Ch. 30: automatically, immense, faucets, groped, deluge, swirling

Ch. 31: frisking, skimming, blizzard, sinister, melancholy, uttered

Ch. 32: cramped, glistening, soot, skyscrapers, overnight, incredible

Ch. 33: pandemonium, smithereens, summon, hovering, interrupted, wailing

Ch. 34-36: plummeted, stupor, pinnacle, precisely, squelch, tapered

Ch. 37: aliens, observation, commotion, gruesome, astonishment, hatchets

Ch. 38: flabbergasted, escorted, steeplejacks, limousine, descended, pulleys

Ch. 39: journey, successful, manufacturers, nylon, permanently, elegant