Like teachers countrywide, I spent much of last weekend trying to come up with what to do about World Book Day. I love World Book Day - it's such a great excuse to focus on books and not worry about pesky things like the curriculum. I always enjoy spending time planning the day. However, this year I was struggling.
The whole school was given the focus of Alice in Wonderland. Internet searches came up with the usual sort of KS1 activities - carousels of activities, making potions, writing character descriptions, planning and holding a tea party. They were all... fine.
It was only the night before World Book Day that I realised there was an obvious answer. We would Mantle our way through the day.
And because I've not done it before, and because it went quite well, I thought I'd record it.
The client: Alice's sister
The team: the class of children on World Book Day
The commission: To find Alice and bring her back
1. I read (the first part of) (a shortened version of) the story.
I found an age-appropriate version of the story and read the first few pages.
2. We c0-created the tunnel.
I said to the children something like - this tunnel is going to be important for us today, shall we take a closer look?
The children drew a large circle together, and filled it with the sorts of things they thought might be in it.
3. I carried on reading.
I read up until the White Rabbit accused Alice of stealing the Queen's tarts.
4. The children watched a video.
First, with just actions.
Then with words included
I represented Alice's sister. I lay on a blanket reading a book. The children watched closely and noticed that I looked worried and kept looking at my watch.
Then I repeated the video, this time with words, indicating that I was looking for Alice.
Finally, as the children chattered and speculated, I suggested it might be useful if they could talk to Alice's sister. They agreed, of course. This time when I stepped onto the blanket they immediately started talking to me. It didn't take long for them to say 'we could help you!' (the joys of KS1 children).
5. We prepared for a trip to Wonderland.
The children had many useful suggestions, and when someone mentioned a map we agreed that it would be a good idea for us all to have one. We returned to the classroom where I had pre-prepared some images on slides of what might need to be included in a map of Wonderland. The children created their maps.
6. We entered the story.
We stood in a circle, imagining we were standing around the rabbit's burrow. To pre-empt any overexcitement, I prepared the children for what we were about to do - we discussed a safe way to enter the whole, and what it would be like to float down it. Then we stepped into the circle and enacted floating down the hole, picking up things we saw as we went. The further we went, the wilder the children's imaginations became.
7. We found a door.
We sat on the floor, looking around us - we couldn't find a way out of the hole. Then I drew the children's attention to a small door (I drew this on the board), saying, wait, there is one way out. The children quickly realised they needed a shrinking potion, and a boy said 'Look there's one up there!' pointing upwards. Luckily, someone had packed a ladder so the boy enacted climbing it (with another child holding it for safety, of course) and we all took a sip of the potion, sharing what we tasted.
I gave out some card potion bottles I'd prepared and invited the children to show the potion they experienced on it - I said 'I'm really interested in all the different tastes and colours you experienced - can you show your potion?' The children drew fruits, lollies, chocolate etc and coloured their potion.
Mantle allows children to take the story in different directions - it didn't matter that they'd all sipped from the same potion bottle, they could all see and taste different potions.
8. How small are you now?
I said something like - I noticed some of us took just a tiny sip, while some of us drank quite a lot. Has this affected how much we've shrunk do you think?'
I took a ruler and indicated my new height - 12cm - and drew an image of myself of that height. The children were then invited to do the same.
(If I'd have had more time, I would have paused for longer, to do a full lesson on measurement).
We lined up our images on the board to compare our heights.
9. The pool of tears.
I gathered the children in a circle then said something like - 'there's something we didn't think of when we took that potion....' I rolled out a large pool-shaped piece of blue paper and the children recognised it as Alice's pool of tears. We were now small, and the pool was big. I queried how we were going to get across it. Then I said - 'we have of course got an even bigger problem - look closely, I think I can see something swimming in the pool.'
I found a pencil and drew a large mouse swimming. The children then started to spot other creatures, and as they did I passed around pencils and invited them to draw what they saw. Not everyone joined in, and that was fine.
We concluded that we couldn't possibly swim - we would need some boats.
Here, I paused the story and taught children how to make simple origami paper boats. I say simple, but such things are never simple with multiple 5-7 year olds. However, we had fun.
10. Crossing the pool of tears.
At this point we went out to the playground. I invited the children to imagine one of the playground lines was the edge of the pool, and as we contemplated crossing the pool of tears I drew some large boats in chalk. We discussed what it might be like crossing the pool, and how we could keep ourselves safe from the creatures in the pool, then the children stepped onto the boats and enacted rowing their way across the pool. I joined them in a boat.
11. The White Rabbit.
I stepped out of my boat and went to the 'other side' of the pool, where I stared drawing the outline of a house. I narrated something like 'As the travellers started to reach the other side of the pool, they saw a small cottage in amongst some trees. They peered through the fence.'
The children gathered around and I continued to draw whilst narrating - 'The cottage had ivy growing up the sides, with small round windows and a green door.'
The children started to guess who might live there.
'There was smoke coming out of the chimney and two statues, either side of the front door'. I drew two rabbit images and the children quickly said 'It's the White Rabbit's house!'.
I wondered whether it might be helpful to talk to the White Rabbit. They of course agreed, so I stepped into role. At this point the children became very loud and angry, accusing the White Rabbit of stealing the tarts and generally yelling. In role, I marched away and slammed the door.
I paused the story and we discussed the White Rabbit's reaction. The children realised they'd been rude, so we tried again. They knocked on the door, I took on the role of the White Rabbit and the children spoke to me more politely. I pointed them in the direction of the Queen's garden, saying that was where Alice was last seen. I warned them though that the Queen was always in a very bad mood.
12. The Queen's Garden.
I can't remember quite how I got from the White Rabbit's House to the Queen's garden, but anyway, on the screen back in the classroom I had an image of an ornate iron gate with a garden behind it. We'd reached the garden gate. We discussed the idea of going into the garden (remembering the rabbit's warning) and then I said - we will also have to be extra cautious because - look at the sign on the front gate.
I drew a sign onto the gate image and wrote on it 'The Queen of Heart's Garden Rules'.
We discussed what these might be, and then the children wrote their own which we blutacked up onto our classroom door.
This was a good, purposeful reason for the children to write and they were all engaged in their writing. Admittedly, their writing wasn't of the highest standard (again, if I was carrying this mantle out over a longer period of time, I would take more time over this writing) but the children thoroughly enjoyed their writing and enjoyed displaying it.
13. Ending the story.
After lunch, I had the image of the garden gate on the board and said something like 'if you peer through this gate, can you spot what I have spotted?'. The children 'peered' while I drew a wooden chest with a padlock on. I said - there's a sound coming from it', and wrote 'knock knock' on the board.
They all said 'It's Alice!'
So, our job now was to finish the story. The children were quite tired by this point, so we shared ideas of what to do next and I suggested to them that we could have lots of endings to this story. I gave out pieces of sugar paper, and the children drew and wrote how they would like the story to end. They then shared their ideas with each other. The endings ranged from rescuing Alice and escaping in a hot air balloon, to having us all getting our heads chopped off by the Queen's guards.
The End.
Why I enjoyed my World Book Day(s).
* The children were completely immersed in the story and the setting of Alice in Wonderland
* Activities were purposeful
* I didn't have to worry about maths, reading and writing outcomes. Which is always a joy with 5-7 year olds
* It was the most creative I've been for a very long time.
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