How not to find goblins in a cave (a lesson in givens and easing in to the story).

Today's mantle session was quite pleasing, so I thought I'd record it. It involved a few of my favourite things, such as co-creation, preparing children to enter the fiction, and managing not to find goblins in a cave. 

Previously in our spring term Mantle:

The children became a team of elephant keepers, caring for a small herd of six elephants. They were approached by an archaeologist who had found this image in a cave in Russia.

She thought the image might be of elephants, and approached the team to find out whether they agreed. 

With a little research, the team thought that the images might actually be of woolly mammoths. They decided they'd like to visit the caves to find out more. 

Co-creation:

Our first step was to create a representation of the cave. I turned a few tables over, covered them in paper and presented the children with some charcoal. We talked about why charcoal might be a good material for some cave drawings, and then the children were invited to re-create the caves ready for the next part of our story. This was definitely (as you can see) a session more focused on investment than high-quality art. 

The next day, I once again set up the cave and, with the help of a resourceful student teacher, darkened the room.

Before we entered the cave:

I have learnt, several times over, of the importance of preparing the children before entering a fiction. See this blog post if you're interested. 

Before entering the cave, I wanted to make sure it was a valuable experience for the children and for the story. Any early years teacher could list the number of pitfalls that could happen were I simply to say 'off we go then, into the cave!' We talked about stepping into the story and entering the cave. We talked about  how we should act when inside the ancient cave. We decided we should creep quietly, so as not to disturb any potential sleeping bats. 

We talked about what we might find in the cave. One small child called out 'GOBLINS!' - thank goodness I'd asked before we stepped into the story. The last thing I wanted, in a 20,000 year old cave filled with cave paintings of woolly mammoths, was a goblin. With this in mind, we decided an adult should go into the cave first to check for goblins and other such creatures. Thankfully, none were found. 

Upon entering the cave:

The children entered the cave beautifully. The power of mantle and drama still continually amazes me: for the children, in this moment, they were in the caves, in Russia, looking at cave art that was 20,000 years old. I don't even think one child said 'That's my drawing!' They crept around the cave, looking at the images. 

When one child said 'We need to feed blood to the cave bats!' there was, momentarily, a chance that the story could take a different turn. However, we agreed that the bats, being wild, probably just needed us to leave them alone. 

The team looked at the images, discussing whether they were of elephants or mammoths. 

Adult-in-role:

At one point (before the children could become too interested in feeding blood to cave bats) I asked the children whether it would be helpful for Rashka (the archaeologist) to meet us here, to talk to her about what we had found. They agreed, so I explained that my TA would represent Rashka.  The children sat down and my TA stepped into role as Rashka; the children had a lot to talk to her about and we agreed that the paintings were probably of mammoths, rather than elephants. 

We agreed to learn more about mammoths and to pass on what we found out to Rashka to help her to continue her work. 

The Curriculum Bit

The rest of the session was spent trying to research mammoths using ipads. The internet connection and children's lack of patience with it made me long to return to the cave, bats and all.