This was a half-day session I carried out at The TARDIS at Chapel Break Infant with a group of Year 1 students. The classes were of about 12 children and included some students for whom English was not their home language. While carrying out this session I had the support of one staff member who usually works at The TARDIS.
The material is enough for a whole day of work, so I have so far only tested half of it.
Aim: To get the students thinking imaginatively about words to describe monsters and give them the chance to play with lyrics. To encourage them to share and work collaboratively and (in the second half) to work on descriptive words.
Target Age: 5-7 (depending on ability)
Key Skills: Word generation - adjectives related to monsters, team-working, drawing and colouring.
Resources: · Dice (one per group). · Example monster picture. · Example monster poem. · Large pieces of paper and pens for sticking the monster body parts onto and scissors to cut them out with. Glue sticks for sticking the parts down. · Paper - if possible pre-cut this into suitable sized rectangles - and pens, pencils etc for drawing the monster body parts. · Interesting pots to put the different body parts into with labels (LEGS, HEADS etc).
Steps: 1. Introduce myself and lesson theme – monsters. 2. What sounds do they think monsters might make? They give examples individually. 3. As a group they do their monster sounds louder and quieter, according to my direction -lifting arm up and down for louder/quieter. 4. Do they know the song 'Heads, shoulders, knees and toes?' - sing this. 5. That's not very monstery! - Change 'Heads' to something more suitable - any ideas? E.g. Fangs! Add gestures too. Change one word at a time. (When we did this, we ended up with: Fangs, brown teeth, claws and wings, claws and wings... And fur and spots and scales and horns.... I initially only intended to do the first line, but the kids wanted to change all the words.) 6. We are going to make our own monsters. Show them the example picture. 7. Read out the poem - students (you can do this one at a time, or get the students to direct someone - blindfolded perhaps) point to the body parts as I read out the poem. (The poem for the monster in the illustration was: My Monster My monster has three heads, One big, one orange, one green. My monster has two wings, One black and red, and one with feathers. My monster has one arm, Green with yellow spots. My monster has five tails! One crocodile tail, One devil tail, One goldfish tail, One pink tail, One red and black tail. My monster has four legs. One pink fluffy leg, One red leg, One orange leg with triangles, One blue leg with a hairy spot. My monster likes eating. It eats curry and cardboard, And chips and cornflakes. My monster likes reading. It likes the Radio Times, And Heat. My monster likes talking. It talks like this: ROARRRRR awwuug-aa! RRRRrrrRR! But only when it’s angry. My monster plays games with me. It plays tennis, football and Pokemon on the DS. My monster is called Bernard. 8. Divide the class into groups: legs, wings, heads, tails, arms. Hand out paper and pens - they need to draw and colour in lots of different arms/legs... whichever group they are in. Then cut them out and put them into the relevant pots. 9. In their groups they draw a body for their monster in the centre of their page. Each group then rolls a dice per body part type to find out how many heads, legs etc. their monsters will have. They stick the body parts down and colour the main body. THIS IS (roughly) THE HALFWAY POINT. The next stage is higher level. 10. They pick a name for their monster. 11. They brainstorm words to describe their monster's body parts and write these down if possible. 12. Each group shows the class their monster and describes it to the class.
NB for a higher-level/older group, they could make their own versions of the Monster Poem: My monster has...... (fill in number) heads. They are............... (descriptions) - this line is optional. Etc... You could then simply end it with: I love/hate my monster. You could also add things like: My monster likes... (hobbies) and how he/she walks, sleeps....
There is also the possibility to do drama related activities - get them thinking about how their monsters move and walking around in that way, how they speak/sound and making these noises, etc.