Oliver Twist - Teachit Primary · Oliver Twist TEACHER NOTES By Charles Dickens ... Oliver is...

Oliver TwistT E ACH ER N OT E S By Charles Dickens

© Puffin Books 2015 22097 of 16www.teachitprimary.co.uk

Background to the novelDickens’ second novel Oliver Twist was first published in 1837-8 and was important (as were many of Dickens’ novels) in raising awareness of childhood deprivation during the Victorian era. Dickens was one of the first ‘celebrities’ to become very famous for his writing.

In the story Oliver’s mother Agnes has died in the workhouse at Oliver’s birth without revealing who his father was. Oliver is brought up as an orphan and moved at the age of 9 to the workhouse. Here he falls under the strict authority of Mr Bumble the beadle. At the beginning of the first extract in text 1 (from chapter 3) he has been brought to the undertakers Mr & Mrs Sowerberry to work as an apprentice.

The second extract is from chapter 28 when the sinister Monks is trying to track down information about Oliver’s mother. He finds the Bumbles and asks them about Agnes (who they refer to as Sally).

1. Mrs Sowerberry (comprehension/language development)You will need:

• to explain a bit about what has happened to Oliver before reading text 1 (see above)

• copies of text 1 – Mrs Sowerberry

• dictionaries

• copies of worksheet 1 – Mrs Sowerberry

The purpose of this is to help to understand some of Dickens’ more challenging phrases and to begin to get a picture of what a degraded life Oliver is leading. Children look for the focus words and phrases in the passage and talk in groups about the implications of them before looking up dictionary meanings. Make sure that by the end of the activity they understand that Oliver is hungry enough to be excited by the prospect of leftovers put aside for the dog, Trip.

2. Children in the 21st Century (PSHE/Art/IT)You will need:

• access to the internet to research child deprivation

• copies of worksheet 2 – Children in the 21st Century

• card to be cut

• paint or pens

• scissors

Now that the children know a bit about Oliver’s situation they are going to discuss how such things can happen and whether there are any examples of comparable circumstances in the world of today.

Amnesty International and UNICEF have resources that may help. You might want to narrow down the search so that the children find the most useful sites.



The children research child poverty and deprivation and make notes about what is happening in the 21st century. They prepare a presentation about this, eg. in Powerpoint. Then they draw on card round their hand and cut the card out and draw a picture on it of the issue about which they feel most strongly.

You could develop this into an assembly for the rest of the school and make a display with the hands.

3. Names (reading for meaning)You will need:

• copies of worksheet 3 – Names

• access to the internet to research Dickens’ names from other books (for extension activity)

Dickens is famous for giving his characters names that tell us what they will be like. There are 5 short passages that give us clues to the people they describe. Match the names with their passages.

Extension activity: Find out some of the names from other books that Dickens wrote and guess what their characters might be like.

4. Mr Monks & Mrs Bumble (playwrighting)You will need:

• copies of worksheet 4 – Mr Monks & Mrs Bumble (two pages)

• copies of the extract Mr Monks & Mrs Bumble

• dictionaries

Explain how the story has progressed as outlined at the top of the extract. There are some tricky words that will need explanation such as trinket, pawnbroker’s, duplicate, redeemed. Without understanding the definition of these, the meaning of the extract as a whole could be lost.

The play can either be written using the words from the extract or with the children interpreting the meanings in their own words.

Children can act out the scene in pairs or groups with a director helping them to develop the appropriate sense of doom.

5. The locket (descriptive writing)You will need:

• copies of worksheet 5 – The Locket (two pages, questions and a writing frame)

• a locket (if possible, pictures if not).

• copies of both extracts for each person

• highlighter pens in 2 colours

In the first or both extracts highlight all the adjectives in one colour and the adverbs in another as a reminder of how powerful they are in Dickens’ writing.



Explain what a locket is and why people like them. Monks takes the locket in the second extract. The children are going to imagine they have been given a locket by a stranger and they are going to describe the imaginary locket and person.

6. QuizYou will need:

• copies of worksheet 6 – Quiz

• copies of the extract

• all the work done so far

• a prize!

Children are going to make up a quiz about Oliver Twist using all the work they have done so far. Encourage them to ask you questions about anything that they are unclear about in the story as they write their quizzes.

Pool the quiz questions and make teams to compete for a prize.

7. ReviewYou will need:

• copies of worksheet 7 – Review

• the work that has been done

Encourage the children to read more of the book and to investigate other works by Charles Dickens. Remind them that the writings of authors like this in the 19th century had a profound effect on people’s perceptions of how children should be treated and that the impact of literature can be greater than the power to entertain.



Curriculum LinksHistory• This project would sit well within a wider project about the Victorians and their values.

• Time line: this is a very early book and it would be interesting to plot the significant milestones in the rights of children between then and now.

PSHE• The reason that Agnes is having to hide her identity and is not living in a happy home when Oliver is

born is that she is an unmarried mother. It might be appropriate to investigate the changing morals around this issue.

• Fagin The Jew: in other parts of the book the character Fagin is regularly referred to as The Jew. You could investigate the ways that people refer to each other has changed.

Art• Dickens describes things in great detail throughout his writing. A description could be chosen to draw

in detail using pencils and water-colours.

Film Link• If you can source a film of Oliver Twist it would be interesting to see how the written text is treated

on film.

Oliver TwistBy Charles Dickens


T E X T

1. Mrs SowerberryFrom Chapter 3

Mrs. Sowerberry emerged from a little room behind the shop, and presented the form of a short, thin, squeezed-up woman, with a vixenish countenance.

‘My dear,’ said Mr. Sowerberry, deferentially, ‘this is the boy from the workhouse that I told you of.’ Oliver bowed again.

‘Dear me!’ said the undertaker’s wife, ‘he’s very small.’

‘Why, he is rather small,’ replied Mr. Bumble: looking at Oliver as if it were his fault that he was no bigger; ‘he is small. There’s no denying it. But he’ll grow, Mrs. Sowerberry – he’ll grow.’

‘Ah! I dare say he will,’ replied the lady pettishly, ‘on our victuals and our drink. I see no saving in parish children, not I; for they always cost more to keep, than they’re worth. However, men always think they know best. There! Get downstairs, little bag o’ bones.’ With this, the undertaker’s wife opened a side door, and pushed Oliver down a steep flight of stairs into a stone cell, damp and dark: forming the ante-room to the coal-cellar, and denominated ‘kitchen’; wherein sat a slatternly girl, in shoes down at heel, and blue worsted stockings very much out of repair.

‘Here, Charlotte,’ said Mr. Sowerberry, who

had followed Oliver down, ‘give this boy some of the cold bits that were put by for Trip. He hasn’t come home since the morning, so he may go without ‘em. I dare say the boy isn’t too dainty to eat ‘em – are you, boy?’

Oliver, whose eyes had glistened at the mention of meat, and who was trembling with eagerness to devour it, replied in the negative; and a plateful of coarse broken victuals was set before him, which he devoured with all the ferocity of famine.

‘Well,’ said the undertaker’s wife, when Oliver had finished his supper: which she had regarded in silent horror, and with fearful auguries of his future appetite: ‘have you done?’

There being nothing eatable within his reach, Oliver replied in the affirmative.

‘Then come with me,’ said Mrs. Sowerberry: taking up a dim and dirty lamp, and leading the way upstairs; ‘your bed’s under the counter. You don’t mind sleeping among the coffins, I suppose? But it doesn’t much matter whether you do or don’t, for you can’t sleep anywhere else. Come; don’t keep me here all night!’

Oliver lingered no longer, but meekly followed his new mistress.

2. Mr Monks & Mrs BumbleFrom Chapter 28

He thrust his hand into a side-pocket; and producing a canvas bag, told out twenty-five sovereigns on the table, and pushed them over to the woman.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘gather them up; and when this

cursed peal of thunder, which I feel is coming up to break over the housetop, is gone, let’s hear your story.’

The thunder, which seemed in fact much nearer, and to shiver and break almost over their



T E X T

heads, having subsided, Monks, raising his face from the table, bent forward to listen to what the woman should say. The faces of the three nearly touched, as the two men leant over the small table in their eagerness to hear, and the woman also leant forward to render her whisper audible. The sickly rays of the suspended lantern falling directly upon them, aggravated the paleness and anxiety of their countenances: which, encir- cled by the deepest gloom and darkness, looked ghastly in the extreme.

‘When this woman, that we called old Sally, died,’ the matron began, ‘she and I were alone.’

‘Good,’ said Monks, regarding her attentively. ‘Go on.’

‘She spoke of a young creature,’ resumed the matron, ‘who had brought a child into the world some years before; not merely in the same room, but in the same bed, in which she then lay dying.’

‘Ay?’ said Monks, with quivering lip, and glancing over his shoulder, ‘Blood! How things come about!’

‘The child was the one you named to him last night,’ said the matron, nodding carelessly towards her husband; ‘the mother this nurse had robbed.’

‘In life?’ asked Monks.‘In death,’ replied the woman, with something

like a shudder. ‘She stole from the corpse, when it had hardly turned to one, that which the dead mother had prayed her, with her last breath, to keep for the infant’s sake.’

‘She sold it?’ cried Monks, with desperate eagerness; ‘did she sell it? Where? When? To whom? How long before?’

‘As she told me, with great difficulty, that she had done this,’ said the matron, ‘she fell back and died.’

‘Without saying more?’ cried Monks, in a voice which, from its very suppression, seemed only the more furious. ‘It’s a lie! I’ll not be played with. She said more. I’ll tear the life out of you both, but I’ll know what it was.’

‘She didn’t utter another word,’ said the woman, to all appearance unmoved (as Mr Bumble was very far from being) by the strange man’s violence; ‘but she clutched my gown, violently, with one hand, which was partly closed; and when I saw that she was dead, and so removed the hand by force, I found it clasped a scrap of dirty paper.’

‘Which contained –’ interposed Monks, stretching forward.

‘Nothing,’ replied the woman; ‘it was a pawnbroker’s duplicate.’

‘For what?’ demanded Monks.‘In good time I’ll tell you,’ said the woman.

‘I judge that she had kept the trinket, for some time, in the hope of turning it to better account; and then had pawned it; and had saved or scraped together money to pay the pawn-broker’s interest year by year, and prevent its running out; so that if anything came of it, it could still be redeemed. Nothing had come of it; and, as I tell you, she died with the scrap of paper, all worn and tattered, in her hand. The time was out in two days; I thought something might one day come of it too; and so redeemed the pledge.’

‘Where is it now?’ asked Monks quickly.‘There,’ replied the woman. And, as if glad

to be relieved of it, she hastily threw upon the table a small kid bag scarcely large enough for a French watch, which Monks pouncing upon, tore open with trembling hands. It contained a little gold locket: in which were two locks of hair, and a plain gold wedding-ring.

‘It has the word “Agnes” engraved on the inside,’ said the woman. ‘There is a blank left for the surname; and then follows the date; which is within a year before the child was born. I found out that.’

‘And this is all?’ said Monks, after a close and eager scrutiny of the contents of the little packet.

‘All,’ replied the woman.



WO R K SH EE T 1

Mrs SowerberryFind each word or phrase in the extract and read the sentences around it to help you to work out what it means in this context. Use a dictionary to help you write a sentence using each word or phrase correctly.

Word/phrase I think it means The dictionary helped me write

vixenish

countenance

undertaker

pettishly

bag o’ bones

coal-cellar

slatternly

down at heel

worsted stockings very much out of repair



WO R K SH EE T 1

cold bits

too dainty

victuals

ferocity

famine

auguries

coffins



WO R K SH EE T 2

Children in the 21st Century.Make notes from your investigations on the internet about the things that some children in the world have to endure.

Prepare a presentation about this for the whole class.

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WO R K SH EE T 3

Names

… robber of fifty years, whose nose had been almost beaten in, in some

scuffle, and whose face bore a frightful scar which might probably be

traced to the same occasion. This man was a returned transport, and his

name was ..........................................................

Rose, a kind young lady

who likes reading in the

garden.

After walking about a quarter of a mile, they stopped before a detached

house surrounded by a wall: to the top .......................................................... which,

scarcely pausing to take breath, climbed in a twinkling.

Kags a thief of about

50 with scars.

Then, he would walk with Mrs Maylie and .......................................................... and hear

them talk of books; or perhaps sit near them, in some shady place, and listen

whilst the young lady read until it grew too dark to see the letters.

Toby Crackit a thief

who climbs walls and

breaks into houses

very easily.

Mr .......................................................... was an old friend of his, and he must not mind

his being a little rough in his manners; for he was a worthy creature at

bottom, as he had reason to know

Mrs Mann, a cruel,

unfeminine woman who

beats children.

Mrs. .......................................................... emerged from a little room behind the

shop, and presented the form of a short, then, squeezed-up woman, with a

vixenish countenance

Mr Grimwig, a kind man

underneath but grumpy

on the outiside.

Oliver was about to say that he would go along with anybody with great

readiness, when, glancing upward, he caught sight of ..........................................................

who had got behind the beadle’s chair, and was shaking her fist at him with

a furious countenance. He took the hint at once, for the fist had been too

often impressed upon his body not to be deeply impressed upon

his recollection.

Mrs Sowerberry, an

unpleasant small

woman with a nasty

expression.



WO R K SH EE T 4

Mr Monks & Mrs BumbleWhen you have heard the second extract from the book describing the evil Monks trying to get information from Mrs Bumble about Oliver’s mother, use the text to turn it into a play script. Put the speaker’s name in the margin with a colon (:) and remember you do not need to use speech marks for a play.

Don’t forget to include stage directions (in brackets) that tell the actors what to do.

There are only two people in the piece who speak and they are are Mr Monks and Mrs Bumble (referred to as the Matron)

Think of a title for the piece when you have finished. The first few lines are done for you. If there are any words that you do not know look them up in a dictionary.

Title:

Monks

Mrs Bumble

(Mr Monks puts his hand in his pocket and…)

Now! Gather them up and when this cursed peal

of thunder, which I feel is coming to break over the

housetop is gone, let’s hear your story.

(A thunder clap is heard and Mrs Bumble leans forward

looking pale.)

When this woman…

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Oliver TwistWO R K SH EE T 4 By Charles Dickens

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WO R K SH EE T 5

The Locket As you have already seen, Charles Dickens was very good at describing things, people and places. Highlight as many adjectives and adverbs as you can find in the extracts.

Now is your chance to do some describing of your own.

Imagine you have been given a locket. It is special, valuable and beautiful. You are going to answer the questions about your imaginary locket and then write a description of it and the stranger who gave it to you.

What is your locket made out of?

What is inside it?

Are there any jewels on it?

What is on the outside?

Does it have a chain?

How tall was the person who gave it to you?

Was it a man, woman, child, teenager?

What was their skin like?

What were their clothes like?

What was their hair like?

How did they talk?

Why did they give you the locket?



Now use the answers to the questions above to write a vivid description of the person giving you the locket and how you felt.

Try to make it mysterious in some way, and don’t forget to tell us where you were when you got the locket.

You can give your mysterious stranger a Dickensian type of name that tells us something about him or her.

WO R K SH EE T 5

The Mysterious Locket................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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WO R K SH EE T 6

QuizYou are going to make up 6 quiz questions about Oliver Twist based on what you have studied so far. Make sure you ask questions that you know the answer to yourself.

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Oliver TwistWO R K SH EE T 7 By Charles Dickens

Reviewing what we have done

Good bits Bad bits

Do you want to read the rest of the book? ...........................................................................................................................................

Why?

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What did you learn from working on this project?

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