Omar, the Bees and Me – a great stimulus for writing?
Omar, the Bees and Me by Helen Mortimer
I absolutely love this book. Not only is it a beautiful story, but its illustrations are truly captivating. Also, it ticks all the boxes – reading for pleasure, diversity, sustainability, AND I’ve found it’s a brilliant stimulus for writing.
To summarise briefly, Omar, the Bees and Me is a charming tale of how a little girl befriends the new boy at school (Omar, a Syrian refugee) and learns about his culture, leading to a class topic on the critical role of bees and how we can help them. It provides a light-hearted approach to sustainability and places emphasis on the importance of how children can actively protect the environment on a local scale.
Omar, the Bees and Me could be used across the school (a lovely text for a world book day focus for example), but as a writing stimulus I’d say it is probably most applicable in Lower Kew Stage 2 or Year 2. However, I wouldn’t write it off in other year groups, obviously expectations and skills would just be adapted.
As I’ve already touched upon, it can be used in many ways and links to a plethora of topics. To name but a few; sustainability, farming, plants, animals and their habitats. The book itself is a fantastic introduction to any such topic and in my experience, acts as a real hook for the children. Each time I’ve used it, my class have become obsessed with bees and how we can protect them and we’ve usually taken it outside and even changed some areas of our school to be more ‘bee friendly’.
Most importantly, and the whole point of my chatter, is that Omar, the Bees and Me is a catalyst for so many writing opportunities. I’ve included some below that I’ve tried and tested in year 3 with brilliant results by using it alongside the ‘I am a Clever Writer’ approach. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I hope it might help to give you some ideas.
- Diary entry
From experience, summarising the story using the ending (where they sample the honey cake) as both the introduction and concluding paragraph and précising the story to retell ‘how it all led to the sampling of the honey cake’ works well.
- Teachable/applicable skills – paragraphing, *cohesion, sentence types, fronted adverbials/openers, using subordinating conjunctions as openers, emotive language, show don’t tell, apostrophes for possession, rhetorical questions.
*I think cohesion is such an important part of writing and really helps children to develop their author’s voice and can be taught pretty early on. By carefully selecting and teaching ‘the right’ openers/fronted adverbials/conjunctions to use as openers for the genre, children have the scaffold to write in the correct tone and are supported in developing their skills when it comes to linking ideas within and across paragraphs.
I’m also a huge fan of using openers/fronted adverbials to scaffold writing. By modelling these and displaying them on your working wall or as a word bank, the lower and middle ability children have support with creating sentences without too much guidance from an adult, helping them to develop their independence.
Anyway, I digress. Other writing opportunities include:
- Non chronological report
With a focus on bees and their importance to the environment. Bee facts are included in the book itself and could be further researched and explored to develop pupils’ knowledge before writing. If doing a science topic on plants, the non-chronological report could be based on bee-friendly plants and what they need in order to grow successfully; linking to scientific understanding.
- Teachable/applicable skills – paragraphing, cohesion, sentence types, structuring non-fiction texts (subheadings, bullet points), relevant openers
- Instruction writing
There’s instructions to make a honey cake in the back of the book. Children could write instructions on making some other bee-related goods or how to create their own bee-friendly garden in school.
- Teachable/applicable skills – vocabulary building e.g. verbs and adverbs, fronted adverbials/openers, expanded noun phrases, sentence types, structuring non-fiction texts (subheadings, bullet points)
- Persuasive Writing
Convincing others to help save the bees or not to destroy their habitat.
- Teachable/applicable skills – paragraphing, cohesion, sentence types, use of conjunctions, emotive language.
- Poetry
Using Omar, the Bees and Me as inspiration/a lead into a topic on bees various bee poems could be used as a stimulus for children to write their own poem about bees e.g. The Honeybee by Kirsten Hall, Honeybees by Suzie Bitner, or perhaps a spring poem (depending on the time of year)
- Teachable/applicable skills – vocabulary, figurative language, expanded noun phrases with modifiers, speaking and listening.
If you’ve used this book as a stimulus for writing opportunities I’d love to hear about how you’ve made it work for you!
