Just to note - I deliberately didn't plan to do a 'proper' mantle this week for a variety of reasons. I should, of course, have committed fully to mantling but time and curriculum constraints made me hesitate. One day I'll learn the lesson - mantle often and mantle with purpose.
Anyway, what I noticed (which more expert mantlers will already know) was this:
Session 1
The very carefully planned steps in to the fiction went relatively well. Relatively. The children were invested and engaged, behaviour was good (until the end) and I felt a buzz in the classroom. The children took on the mantle of sweet makers and agreed to make and market some new sweets for Willy Wonka Then, throughout the week, investment ebbed and flowed depending on whether or not I used elements of drama/mantle.
Session 2
Making the sweets went very well. Of course it did. Which child would not be interested in making chocolate fudge? Ownership and investment were promoted by giving children choices over how to adapt their fudge recipe.
Session 3
Multiplying decorations, sharing sweets between boxes etc - all in the name of some essential Maths coverage. Had I taught/seen these lessons before I knew about MoE I would have said the children were interested and learning. They were - there was nothing wrong with the lessons. However, now I know about mantle and investment, motivation, purpose etc... there was an element of true investment missing. We'd set the task through the mantle and then sort of let it tick on, without inviting children into the fiction each time.
Session 4
Following the maths sessions I decided to do a little bit of in role work for the next task. The children were going to design posters advertising their sweets. As they came in to the class I had a wall image up on the interactive board with the image of a blank piece of paper pinned to it. As the children wondered aloud what was happening I used shadowy/twilight role to explain that Mr Wonka had asked me to advertise the new sweets but I was stuck for ideas. When he'd seen my poster up on the wall he was not impressed. The children quickly identified why - the poster was not a poster. Relieved, I wondered whether they might help me - I'd managed to collect some ideas from rival companies.
The children agreed and we looked at some Cadbury's etc posters together... and during the afternoon there was a sense of calmness and purpose in the room as the children designed posters for their sweets. Only a small bit of in role work was used, but it seemed to lift the status of the work and deepen the children's engagement.
Session 5
The task was to write some descriptions of sweets. We separated the Year 1 and Year 2 children for this with mixed results. After concluding that the Year 2 children really had not been at all invested in the task, we decided once again that the key would be to increase the tension and demands in the fiction.
Sessions 6,7,8 - the final day
We had a note from Willy Wonka explaining that he'd be along in the afternoon to see the work the children had been doing. There was some discussion about whether this would be 'the real Willy Wonka or you or Miss C' and I reminded children we were inside a story. They didn't seem to mind this. Having this impending event and the related tension did seem to raise the importance of the tasks in hand and we had a very busy day of finishing posters, designing and making packaging (ahhh KS1, 3D nets and lack of glue) the children were ready to present their work to Mr Wonka. A few Year 1 boys seemed to have lost interest a little bit by this point; I'm putting it down to our lack of ensuring the children were fully invested in the fiction.
When they saw our HT coming with her Willy Wonka hat on there was a bit of 'Oh is Mrs D' which I suppose was to be expected - my MoE colleague and I reflected that perhaps we should have made it clear that Mrs D was going to be stepping into role to help us out. Anyway, it didn't seem to matter. All 32 of the children stood smartly while Willy Wonka circulated, asking them about their work and ideas. It was a great way to end the week and by using the role of Willy Wonka (if perhaps not very well) we were able to give the final few hours a sense of purpose.
The teaching and learning that was less 'mantle' during the week was still good - it was an interesting project. However, there was a clear difference in children's investment, focus and sense of purpose when we did use drama and mantley things.
Once again what I have learnt is that mantle helps. I'm sure I'll keep learning this. A few other things I'll be thinking about:
*Better use of AIR
*Maintaining the tension throughout
*Inviting children into the fiction carefully before each task
*More careful choice of client - if I'd made Willy Wonka the client from the start and had an adult stepping in and out of this role, it would perhaps have been more effective.
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