Ideas
Activities to celebrate book day
21 Feb 2009
The following activity can be used to celebrate book day and develop creative writing activities.
The Wonderful World of Books. Aim: To celebrate characters from children's book and develop ideas for creative writing. TIME: 15 minutes+ GROUPS: Individual and then pairs/small groups RESOURCES: Fancy dress (optional) DIRECTIONS: Children begin by working alone. Ask them to find a space in the room, close their eyes and relax. Now, ask them to think about a character they like in a book, guide them through thinking about the characters feet, how they stand/the way they walk. Guide them through thinking about the rest of the characters body, what they wear, how they talk. Now, tell the children that you are going to count slowly to 10 and ask them to imagine they are becoming the character, by 10 they should be in a still image of the character. Now, ask them to start moving around as that character, thinking whether they move quickly or slowly. Children should begin to develop an awareness of the other characters, as they meet someone they can stop and say hello in character, thinking about who their character might be friends with, who might they be scared with etc. EXTENSION: Group the children in pairs/small groups. Ask them to think of a location their characters may meet, what happens when they are there. Ask children to create a still image to show you. Now ask them to imagine they are in a film, if you were to rewind the film back five minutes, what would the picture look like. If you fast forward it, what would it look like. Explore different times of the day when the characters meet. EXTENSION: Now, ask the groups to pick their most interesting image - this is to be their main event. They are then to make an image to show the build up to the main event and an image to show the consequence of the main event. They can add narration or a line of dialogue to explain their images. Celebrate with a sharing of stories the class has made, using famous characters from books.All the children were able to engage with the workshops at their own level and some fantastic stories have been written since!
Literacy Coordinator, Crane Park Primary School