Happy Anniversary Alice in Wonderland!

This year the literary world celebrates the 150th anniversary of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
The story, or at least a version of it, was once told to three little girls on a boating trip. After that Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll was his pseudonym) planned to expand and publish it. One of the first manuscripts was given to one of the girls (Alice Liddell) as a Christmas gift. For this little book, Carroll made his own illustrations and he called it Alice’s adventures underground. Later versions of the book have been illustrated by John Tenniel, he made the images we all know and love. The title of the book also changed slightly and now we know this story mainly as Alice in Wonderland. 

Nowadays many different publications of this book exist as well as films, musicals and plays. This week I have decided to celebrate this loved children’s book myself and that is why I made an Alice in Wonderland workbook for you to use in the classroom. It can be used as a whole, but you can also pick the activities that suit your age group best. Of course I also encourage you to add your own activities.

For some of the activities it is important that the children have read the story. For others they can use their knowledge of the book or films and for some they can just use their creativity.

I hope you like this workbook and please let me know what you think of it or how it went down with the children you teach.
I have not included the answers to any of the activities because I am sure most of you can figure it out. If you would like some help, or you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to leave a message.

Enjoy!

Alice in Wonderland workbook: Alice in Wonderland

Writing prompts

Hey everybody. This week I would like to start by directing you to this website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00rfvk1 (if you did not already know it existed). It is the website for the annual 500 words competition for which children can write a story to enter a competition to win lots and lots and lots of books. If you are a child or if you are working with children aged 5 to 13 they can submit your/their story on the website above. However, you do not have a lot of time left. The competition closes on February 26 at 7 pm. There are some rules, so make sure you read them before you submit a story.

Alright, today is all about creative writing because I will continue my post with four creative writing exercises. For all the exercises you just need some paper, a pen and a creative mind.

1. Take me out
   Instead of changing something in the story, take the characters out of the story and have the children imagine they are ringing their doorbell one morning. What would the day be like? What kind of things would they do together? What kind of challenges would they face (e.g. are they from this time or the past/future/a world that does not exist, and what would therefore confuse them?)
   Another version of this activity could be that the children pick two characters from two different books and have them meet outside of the book and write about a day they would spend together and what would go right/wrong.
2. Super ………
   Set a scene for your class/ group of children. The city you live in is in danger, evil minds have taken the mayor prisoner and they are planning to take over the town and take away everything the children like; the swimming pool, the playing field, their computer and phones etc. Only one person can save the mayor and the town…. But who is it? Have the children picture themselves as a superhero and safe the time with their own cunning plan or special power and write a little story about it. Maybe they can even design their own outfit or superhero mask?
3. Dear creator
   To get children to think about the character(s) of a book they have just read you can ask them to write and interview between a character from the book and the author. Have the children fantasize about what kind of questions you would ask someone who created you and maybe you can also tell them to write about what the character would have liked to change.
4. Dictionary madness
   You can either do this yourself or have a child come up to the front of the class and open the dictionary on a random page. Have someone else say and number between 1 and 20 (depending on how many words there are on the page) and write that word down on the white board. (of course, make sure this word is not rude or impossible, it is probably a good idea to use a school dictionary for this.) Then repeat this two or three more times, which means that at the end there are three or four words written on the white board. Now have the children write a story which includes all of the words. For verbs you can allow them to use all forms and for nouns you can allow them to use plurals too. It will be interesting to read out a couple of stories at the end.

Tip:
I found this amazing website for story starters: http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/story-starters/ Have the children enter their name and their grade and then they can press a button and the program will come up with up to four words and themes to write about. There are different genres too!! It is much fun!

Enjoy!

D is for Dahl

One of my favourite children’s authors is Roald Dahl because of his absurd and creative stories about brave and extraordinary children. This week’s post is about Roald Dahl and his creative work.

When I was an English teaching assistant in a Dutch primary school I created a lesson series about Roald Dahl and today I would like to share it with you. I think this lesson series is great for an EFL class, but can also be used in a British primary school.

Because there will not be any clear steps I will go through every lesson. You have to time your lessons, when I used my lesson series I taught one hour a lesson. I made the materials and accompanied them with several PowerPoint presentations. If you would like me to send those to you, please contact me.

What do you need:

• D is for Dahl workbook  (D is for Dahl Workbook)
• YouTube, computer and projector
• Pens, pencils and colouring pencils
• Space to perform

Lesson 1:

The aim of lesson one is to introduce Roald Dahl as an author. This is especially important when the children you are teaching are not British, because they might not know that much about Dahl and his work.

Activity B, C  and E can easily be done by the children without a lot of help. You can allow them to work in pairs if you like.

For activity A I made a PowerPoint about Roald Dahl’s life. You can find a lot of information about the man online. You can use my questions or make up your own. The answers for my questions are: F(alse), F, F, T(rue), F, T, T, T, F, F, T, T, T, F, F.

For activity D you can use a YouTube video in which the poem is read out loud: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iT0DZV3rQ4

Lesson 2:

The aim of the second lesson is to learn more about the characters and to learn about adjectives.

Activity C can be done without any extra help. Exercise B is an exercise about adjectives and in my workbook I have used Dutch adjectives because I was teaching Dutch children. You can change this into an exercise in the language of your choice or maybe and exercise about synonyms.

For activity A you need two descriptions of characters. You can write these yourself or you can use mine:

The Witches 

A witch is always a woman. When you meet a witch she is always wearing gloves.  A witch doesn’t have finger-nails. She has got claws instead. They also don’t have toes.
Another weird thing about them is that they don’t have hair. She is as bald as a boiled egg. 
Also, a witch has very big nose-holes. And I am not ready yet. A witch also has eyes that change colour and her spit is blue. Scary, isn’t it?

 BFG

The BFG, also known as the big friendly giant is very big. He is much bigger than a normal person. He is wearing a long coat and holding a suitcase and a trumpet. His face looks funny and wrinkly. His nose is as sharp as a knife and his ears are very big. His eyes are also big but they look friendly. The BFG is not mean.

Lesson 3:

For the first activity you can use this YouTube video of the Oompa Loompa song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw0zZttfUaw

For the second part of lesson 3 you will need this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3uVQIhSYfY This is a video in which the poem Little Red Riding Hood is read out loud.

Important: In order not to give away the ending (which is important for the rest of the lesson series!!) you need to stop the video at 2.33 minutes.

Lesson 4 and 5:

For these two lessons you just need the poem up to ‘I am going to eat you anyway’, as it can be found in the workbook.

The children will use lesson 4 to learn the sentences and to practice their individual endings. Each child (there are groups of three) will be one of the characters from the poem. Make sure to tell them that all of them need to be and say something in the play.

The first 10/15 minutes of lesson 5 (depending on how many groups you have) can be the final practice time before the rest of the lesson is used to perform the play. If you really want to make something special out of it you can encourage the children to bring or make their own costumes and props.

I hope you will have fun teaching about Roald Dahl and his wonderful worlds!!

If you have any questions about the lesson series or want to use my PowerPoints or if you have any tips; please do not hesitate to leave a comment and I will contact you!

Harry Potter Book Night on February 5

Yay, the first Harry Potter Book Night is almost here, let’s hope it will be the first of many. On Thursday (night) many shops, libraries and schools throughout the country will organise special events to have children and adults (re)read the awesome Harry Potter series.

That is why this week I will be offering you one Harry Potter activity for which I will be taking you through the steps and then there will be a list of activity ideas that I brainstormed or collected from other websites. In this list I will also share some website links.

My activity is called the Confused Cauldron.

What do you need: 

• Paper
• pens
• A bucket, hat, or even  better; a cauldron:)

Steps: 

1. Divide the group into teams of 2/3 or 4 (it all depends on how many you are).
2. Give the groups 6 pieces of paper each. Again, you can play around with this. If you have a lot of groups 6 will be too much. If you only have two groups you might want to give them some more pieces.
3. Tell them to write down 4 words and 2 characters to do with the Harry Potter books. Make them aware of the fact that they should think a bit further than Harry, because otherwise you might end up with lots of the same characters. It is still possible that some will be the same, but that is no problem. Maybe tell them the words can be words to do with magic in general to make it a bit easier.
4. Have them fold the pieces of paper and place them in the bucket, hat, bowl or cauldron.
5. Now explain that there will be three rounds:
   A. Forbidden word – For this round they look on the piece of paper and describe the character or word without using the word/name or part of the word/name.
   B. One word – During this round the person may only use one word to describe the character or word.
   C. Acting out – This round is all about using your hands and feet. No sounds or talking is allowed.
6. The aim of the game is to score as many points as possible, the pieces of paper are the points. Every team has a limited time (this needs to be set by you. It can either be a minute, a minute and a half or 2 minutes) to guess as many words/characters as possible.
7. Team 1 starts and one of them takes a piece of paper and plays forbidden words. They can only move on to the next piece of paper if they have correctly guessed what is on their first. When their time has passed it is the next team’s turn. The pieces of paper that were guessed correctly by team 1 or kept by them. You play on until your container (cauldron, hat, etc) is empty and then you count the points per team and write them down. Make sure everyone gets a go.
8. Then all the pieces of paper are folded again and put back into the container and round 2 starts. This means they will be playing with the same words, so it should become easier. But for round two they can only use one word, so that is a lot harder than before. Advise them it might be a good idea to use one word that has also been mentioned in the first round and stood out. It works the same way: they have a limited time and keep the guessed ones, when they are gone you count them, put them back and then go on to round 3.
9. Then after all 3 rounds have been played, you add up all the points and there will be a winning team.

Other ideas for an amazing Harry Potter Book Night: 

• Writing home – have the children write a letter to their parents in the Muggle world, describing their first week at Hogwarts.
• Crazy Spells – ask the children what they have always wanted to do if only they had the right spell to make it happen. Have them write this spell (alone or in groups) and explore things like rhymes and sentence length.
• On this website children (and adults;) ) can learn how to draw Harry Potter characters. This on its own is already a fun activity but maybe they can draw a short comic after some practice? Website: http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/learn-to-draw-harry-potter-characters
• Harry Potter Hot seat – Remember the hot seat game from one of my earlier posts? Maybe you can play this game with Harry Potter characters too.
• Shop design – Have the children design a new shop for Diagon Alley. What will they sell? What does the shop window look like? Who works there?
• Harry Potter quiz – Maybe you can play a Harry Potter quiz in your classroom? Think of questions, create a nice PowerPoint presentation and have the children play in teams. There are plenty of quizzes to be found online for inspiration.
• House Design – Hogwarts is getting too full and the houses can no longer take new students. Maybe the children can think of a new house and a house crest/shield.
• What if? – brainstorm possibilities with children. What would have happened if Snape were still alive or what if Harry had never met Dobbey? Or what if Harry had been a very bad seeker? How would these things have changed the story?
• Creating a word search or puzzle – older children might like to make a crossword puzzle for others in their group. They can base the questions on the Harry Potter books.
• If you would like some more ideas or want a downloadable activity kit I would go to http://harrypotter.bloomsbury.com/uk/harry-potter-book-night/ on their website you can find lots of information about the book night and they have an awesome activity kit with work sheets, quizzes and other ideas that you can download for FREE!!

I hope you will all have an awesome Harry Potter Book Night on Thursday! But even if you cannot do it on Thursday, any night/day is a good time for a Harry Potter themed activity, don’t you think?!