The Twits - Roald Dahl

Mr and Mrs Twit are possibly the vilest of all Roald Dahl’s creations. They are ugly on the inside, as is evident from the cruel tricks they play on each other and the way they treat the Muggle-Wump monkeys, and utterly disgusting on the outside!

Genre:  animals, revenge, funny

Themes: comedy, pranks, kindness, cooking, silly

Age: 7-8 years old

The Twits - Roald Dahl​ book cover

Activities

  • Description and retrieval. Write profiles for Mr and Mrs Twit. What do they look like? What’s their personality? How do they behave? (CC links: English)
  • Imagine. Mr and Mrs Twit play many nasty tricks on each other throughout the book. Using what your learners have read, get your learners to create their own mischievous trick to play on a friend! Get them to answer: why play the trick? What will the trick involve? How will the trick be set up? How does it begin? How does the trick end? How will the victim react? (CC links: English)
  • Research. Some of the modern versions of Roald Dahl’s books include information about his life. Get learners to write a biography or create a timeline of Dahl’s life.
  • Character inference. Choose one of the Twits and create a gingerbread person. On the outside label the drawing with their appearance, how they behave and what others think of them. On the inside of the gingerbread person, get your learners to fill it with how they feel and what they think about other things or people. (Use ‘Gingerbread Character’ resource)
  • Drawing and inference. It’s believed that Roald Dahl hated beards so he created the character Mr. Twit with a grotesque mop of hair on his face. Using the description in the book, draw Mr. Twit and his wild beard.

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