Please, please don't stand on the turtles.

Being fairly new to Mantling, planning tends to take me a while. Today's session, though, was at a competely new level. I'd spent most of my Saturday thinking about and piecing together this plan. In Mantle speak, I was highly invested.

It bothered me, then, when a couple of the children were not so invested in it. There were, of course, 28-odd other children who were, but it's those couple that are bothering me. 

Previously
The children had created an island and learnt of the myth of the Honu. They'd built a statue of the Honu in role as islanders and had paid homage to the Honu. 

Today
I cordoned off a section of the playground and wrote a sign saying 'Beach closed: authorised people only'. In the cordoned off section my colleagues and I drew 20-odd chalk turtles of realistic sizes. The children came out from lunch to find this and were immediately interested. We let them look and discusss. A good start. 

I stepped across the barrier and crouched down next to a tortoise with a clip board. I froze,  looking determinedly at the turtle and not at the children (in conventions terms, this might be number 3, but it might not). This was hard for me.

The children were asking such questions as:
'What is she doing?'
'Who is she?'
'Is she authorised?'
My colleague, as faciliator, supported them. There were a lot of links made to their previous work - many children thought this must be 'Honu Beach.' They were interested and motivated to find out more.

I could hear them asking lots of questions and so I was 'brought to life' by my colleague (possibly convention 1 as I was there, fully present and just being me). The children all listened and many asked questions to establish what was going on. I was a marine biologist, tagging these turtles in order to track their migration. We were on Mombasa Beach in Kenya. They were surprised that it wasn't on Honu Island. I was able to use the role to address some misconceptions (e.g. that the turtles would die if they didn't get back to the sea). 

At some point, the children offered to help with my tagging so each had a clipboard and chose a turtle to measure, name and number. The names were the best part; everything from Ellie to Fred to Jack to Daisy.  The aim of this activity was to bring children further into the fiction and give them something to be concerned about; so far, they had been interested but had not really had anything to be particularly concerned about or for. Added to this, we were working towards becoming the expert team and this would step them in the right direction.

Most children tiptoed around the turtles, measured them and asked if it was okay to touch them. However, a couple didn't. Instead, they were (shock, horror) deliberately standing on the chalk turtles, or placing their rulers across the turtle backs and balancing along them. They just weren't invested in the fiction. I wasn't sure what to do so I focussed on those that were, and tried to ask questions of those that weren't, or model to them how to measure the turtles to try and bring them in. At one point, in role, I sent one child away from the turtles as he wasn't treating them with respect. In hindsight, perhaps I should have done this a bit more to emphasise the correct treatment of wildlife; in a classroom I wouldn't hesitate to set clear boundaries and expectations. Either way, while the majority of children were invested and concerned, these children weren't. 

One of said children subsequently surprised me, though. I gave the children trackers to fit onto their turtles and, completely seriously, he returned saying his wasn't big enough for the turtle. I gave him a bigger one. These trackers were entirely imaginary and yet he was involving himself in the fiction. Perhaps it was that one thing - the idea of a tracker - that grabbed this child.

The children left the beach and a short while later I followed, out of role, to join them. We looked at turtle migrations and they planned a possible route for their own turtle from Mombasa to Honu Island. They were fairly involved in this and I think that having 'their' turtle to think about really did help.

Talking through the session with my colleague later, we think it was fairly successful in terms of engagement and motivation. There was a lot of (not necessarily curriculum-related) learning going on.  As teachers do, though, we focussed on those few children who didn't respond quite so well - what didn't we get right? We've concluded that they just need more time - they're taking longer to work through the continuum of engagement and our job is to find ways further to develop investment and concern. We're going to develop their team 'Turtle Watch' station with them tomorrow, including a large display tracking the turtles (with a named representation of each turtle on it, which will move as the turtles 'migrate'). The children will have power and control over the majority of this activity and I usually find that this brings in children who are on the edges. Usually. 

I'll be refreshing my memory on the continuum of engagement and on what to do about those few children. 


Note: the idea of a 'turtle watch' is not my own. I came across it during a Mantle training session and do not know who to credit for it. I have, however, planned it all myself - it is the title and the team that I have borrowed. Lots of great planning by experts can be found here.