KS1- English - Sticks, Stanley and School

Learning Objectives

Spoken Language: - use spoken language to develop understanding through speculating, hypothesising, imagining and exploring ideas Comprehension: -being encouraged to link what they read or hear to their own experiences - participate in discussion about what is read to them, taking turns and listening to what others say

Resources

Selection of sticks in differing sizes, some dead wood and some freshly cut sticks. Paper and pencils, twig ID guide, a cross section of a piece of wood, or a small off cut of wood, with knots in it.

Introduction

Read Stanley’s Stick together.

Ask the children if they have a favourite toy that can be more than one thing, and ask them to recount examples of play to each other. Talk about when they play outdoors, and if they, like Stanley like to play with sticks and what they like to play.

Discuss how to play safely with sticks. Open the conversation and ask the children to create some pictures with Safety Rules with Sticks, for example, not to hit each other, make sure they have space to play, be aware of who is around you, what size of stick is safe to carry and how should it be carried. Punch holes in the safety posters and attach string so the posters can be hung.

Activity

Hang the safety posters on a tree outside near to where you will be working.

Revisit with each other the safety rules. Explore any wooded area of the school grounds on a class stick hunt, explaining to the children to collect only any fallen sticks, and only sticks as long as their forearm. Ideally each child should have a stick.Give each group a pencil and a paper and ask the children to write a list of what other jobs they could imagine their stick to have. Encourage the children to use their imaginations like Stanley and see what their sticks could be. Taking turns, read aloud their list from the paper, showing their sticks to the rest of the class.

Plenary

Using the twig id guide, see if you can identify what tree some of the sticks came from, asking the children to copy the name on to their Stick List.