Personal experience

I'd only ever read two wordless picture books before I found Tuesday and they were Flotsam (also by David Wiesner) and The Arrival by Shaun Tan. I was working 1:1 with a boy in my Year 6 class who found reading very tricky but had a wicked imagination. He showed me this book and told me the story right from start to finish and it got me hooked on wordless picture books. From then, I didn't realise just how effective they are for writing outcomes until I started using them more. I make sure now that I use at least one wordless picture book each term because they're perfect for getting the creative juices flowing and for children who find reading a little bit trickier. 

Summary

The story contains only six words and three points that determine the time of the action. The whole story is narrated by colourful pictures of toads flying on their lilypads where their journey begins on "Tuesday evening, around eight". We see them watching TV with an elderly character, getting chased by a dog and being investigated by a suspicious detective. 

The big read/watch

I like to explore the front cover of this book before exploring the book because there's lots to talk about! We will make some observations, draw some conclusions and make some predictions. After that, we explore the book. I actually love to watch the animated version of this story which can be found on YouTube pausing every now and then to summarise what's going on.

The pictures 

I love David Wiesner's illustrations. The images in his book are colourful and quirky and they just add to the humour; every time I've shown this book to my class, they laugh at the amphibian antics! Here are some of their favourite images as voted for by my Year 4 class...

Writing sessions

The fact that this is a wordless picture book is refreshing in the sense that my students are able to take lead of the story no matter what Key Stage they are in.  For my younger ones, I find that this book is really great for the objective encapsulating what they want to say, sentence by sentence before they write it. Since there are so many enthralling images. there is certainly a lot to say!

For my older ones, I enjoy using this book to teach and revise the skill of using and punctuating speech. In groups, I give them each a section from the book to firstly narrate (the various accents they used for the frogs is hilarious) and then integrate dialogue to convey character . It is so nice to see all the different ideas they come up with: some of the frogs are carefree, some are rather bossy and some are highly anxious. After they've created one as a group, I allow them free choice of the rest of the images to apply the same skill. 

Main writing outcome: a narrative using speech to advance the action 

Shorter writing outcomes: a police report, interviews and a diary entry.

Good grammar links: Speech, statement/command/question/exclamation, tense types