Term One - A Summery Saturday Morning

A Summer Saturday Morning by Margaret Mahy

Listen to the story - You Tube Link

A Summery Saturday Morning Activities (from NZ Picture Book Collection Website)

• Reinforce the "3 ways to read a book" idea.  That is: Read the pictures.  Read the words. Retell the story. There is lots of visual information to prompt the children to use their own experiences to connect with the text.

• The pictures show some classic New Zealand Saturday morning scenes – out for a walk, mowing the lawn, hanging out the washing, cats lazing in the sun, sailing, paddling in the sea, fishing and bike riding. (from NZ Picture Book Collection Website)

Other ideas from the website include:

In groups, children could practise retelling the story as a dramatisation. This could be done in several different ways:

• A narrator reads the story as the others act out the parts of the animals in mime.
• Children rewrite the story in their own words, which is then narrated and acted out.
• Children create a play (written or orally) from the text of the book, whereby each character has lines to say.
• The story may be acted out completely in mime.
• After reading through the story a couple of times, identify all of the characters and actions in the story. Ask the children to find a space in the room and practise moving and acting like each character. For example:
• How would the dogs go down the wiggly track?
• How do you think the children are feeling at the beginning of the story? How would they move to show this?
• Find a partner – one be the dog and one the cat. The dog chases the cat!
• How would you show that you are the boy on the rattly bike?
• How could you show that the wind is blowing wild and free?
• When children have had some practise, they can go away in groups and work on their dramatisation, which they would later perform to the class.
• Try using musical instruments to add in some sound effects (Music)
• Think about costumes for each character (The Arts)
• Perform to a wider audience – parents or school assembly

As well as exploring the pictures, reading the text several times and retelling through drama, I'm interested in the ideas around exploring rhyme and using the text as a springboard for the children's own writing.  We have been working on talking to tell our own stories and using our own experiences to come up with ideas for writing, so this fits in well with that teaching point.