How to find a crocodile.

Today I had the most fun with my class that I've had since September. Largely because I decided to dedicate the whole morning to Mantle of the Expert and forget, if briefly, maths, spellings, phonics and other such things. 

I thought I'd outline how I went about planning the session and how it unfolded, because it took me a while to decide what to do. 

The challenge.
I needed the children to find the Enormous Crocodile (of Roald Dahl fame) in the Maasai Mara. They'd been in the Maasai Mara for a while, on and off, helping a zoologist to look for said crocodile. They'd met people from the Maasai Tribe, they'd helped to relocate a number of pesky Nile crocodiles that were causing problems, they'd helped to build an effective fence to protect a Maasai boma... but they hadn't found the crocodile. 

During one previous session the children had been in the Maasai Mara and there'd been a lot of 'I've found him! I've found him!' from various voices. We had mapped out the crocodile sightings and agreed that we needed to decide whether any of these sightings were the actual Enormous Crocodile, or just regular Nile crocodiles. 

So that's where we were up to.

I wasn't sure where to begin with actually finding the crocodile. I needed there to be some tension and for the children to be completely invested in the story and in the idea that they really had found the crocodile. I spent a while looking at the Conventions of Dramatic Action and finally come up with the vague idea of a plan. 

I started with a signpost. 
The children had previously seen an image of a sign warning of crocodiles and not to swim in a river. I created a signpost using the same image, but adapted it:

I left this in the classroom from the start of the day, and the children immediately saw it and started discussing it. 

When it was time for the mantle episode to start, I brought it to the front of the room along with a map of the Maasai Mara, with X marked on it somewhere on the Mara river. We discussed what this sign might mean. Ideas included:

* someone had changed the sign to trick us
* the crocodiles had changed the sign to trick us
* since we had relocated several crocodiles due to overcrowding, this part of the river was now safe so we could, in fact, swim in it

There was a problem
At one opportune moment, possibly after one of these suggestions, I said something like:  'It's interesting you should say that because, as it happens, something terrible is about to happen in our story, near this signpost.'

I used masking tape to mark out the edge of the river and put the sign up next to it.  I asked the children whether they would like to represent a group of children. Most of them wanted to. The few that didn't joined me, and I got them involved later on. 

I then narrated the children playing at the edge of the river and spotting the sign. From this point I didn't have to narrate: the children took the lead, entering the river and splashing happily in it. 

At which point I said: 'Just then, a strange voice was heard coming from the reeds...' and in my best Enormous Crocodile voice I said, 'I'm going to fill my great big tummy, with children that are yummy, yummy yummy!'.  

Then I paused the story. I do this a lot - I pause the story to give us all time to think about what might happen next, what we want to happen next, and how it will happen. 

We talked about what might happen next and how these children were, in fact, in terrible danger. I suggested that perhaps the remaining children (who had not wanted to represent the children in the water) could represent our team - the Terrific Nature Travellers - and help out. They agreed, so we rewound the story and started again. This is a very helpful convention: rewinding something so the children can see it again, or act it again. It can help them to be more prepared the second time around, or to notice things they didn't notice before. 

This time, I started them off using my narrative voice, but then stepped back so they could enact what happened. Once the children were in the water, and they had heard the crocodile's voice, they started to panic. Luckily, the smaller team ran in to rescue them, saying things like 'You've got to get out! The Enormous Crocodile will eat you!'

Once everyone was safe, I paused the story again. 

We discussed what had happened and that, finally, we had found the Enormous Crocodile. I invited the children to create a representation of the crocodile in the river and, what with it being the end of term and me being able to go completely off timetable, they took a long time creating this beautiful thing:

(As a side note, my lovely TA, who is not usually with me for mantle, commented on how rich a learning experience creating this crocodile was. Initially, yes, there was chaos (a class of small children, a lot of slightly random resources, and one crocodile to create) but then for around 15 minutes, the children were working, making decisions, talking to each other, coming to compromises and completely invested in the task).

When we had finished, we sat down to discuss what should be done about the crocodile. Now, at this point I had no particular plan for where I wanted the story to go. It made a nice change - what with all the curriculum pressures and the requirement to produce evidence of what each and every child can do, I've found my mantle sessions a little less free recently than I'd like. But not today - I had set aside the whole morning. 

There were various discussions about moving him, putting him in a cage, just leaving him but feeding him up.... but eventually it was decided we should take photographs of him and put up lots of warning signs around the Maasai Mara. So we got out the iPads, took photos and made posters. In the interests of transparency, this didn't actually go very smoothly because none of the iPads wanted to print, but that's technology in a KS1 classroom for you. In the end, they each used my teacher iPad. 

And with that, the team had finally found The Enormous Crocodile whilst also preventing the deaths of some innocent children. 

Next we are going to let our client, the zoologist, know that we have found the crocodile.