In a previous post, on a page far away, I explained how I was learning the importance of children helping to make the stories they are involved in during a mantle.
Something I have been pondering over, since then, is how to balance this story-making with ensuring that facts and knowledge are learnt. Unsurprisingly, I don't have an answer. However, during the past week or so my MoE colleague and I have noticed it (occasionally) working (ish).
Fire marshals in training:
1666. Having agreed to become volunteer fire marshals for King Charles II, the children were ready to undertake training. All fictional, of course.
However, through this training the children learnt about equipment that would have been used in 1666, the differences in communication systems now and then, and how to form a bucket brigade to put out the fire.
Fire marshals called to action:
During an ordinary day, post Great Fire in 1666, the children in role were going about their business when they heard the fire call. As fire marshals they went to put out the latest fire and to try and establish why it had started. They decided they'd seen someone running away - someone was setting the fires on purpose. All pretty fictional.
This was a tricky point in the 'children making the stories' process. They'd created this person they wanted to hunt down and put in prison, instead of looking for causes of the fire (historically accurate) as I'd intended. We made 'wanted' posters and put them up around London, at the request of King Charles.
However, through some inventive mantling, we turned this fiction towards fact with...
The problem of homelessness.
The children were told that the suspect had been caught thanks to their posters. Through a convention* of the role being drawn on paper as the children watched, we introduced the person as someone who had been made homeless by the fire. They'd been sleeping in a shop doorway when their candle was knocked over, starting the fire. They'd run away in fear.
This role brought in the grace element - instead of 'catching the baddie' the children had to consider what to do about the problem of the 13,200 houses that had been burnt down during the Great Fire (fact) and the homeless this caused (also fact).
Rebuilding London.
Having agreed to help rebuild London, the children were introduced to the 1667 Act for Rebuilding the City of London (fact). With this as a starting point, they learnt some of the changes that happened as a result of the Great Fire of London (fact) and designed new London streets with wider (cobbled) streets, houses made of brick and stone and names such as Jedi Street and Pudding Pie Lane (some clearly more realistic than others).
They marked these (fictional) streets on a (factual) map of London after the fire.
Weaving facts into a story requires some creative thinking and regular changes of direction, but it definitely makes the facts more interesting/meaningful/purposeful/memorable/etc.
Hooray for stories.
Notes:
* I think this is convention 9, but I am quite possibly wrong.
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