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www.teachwire.net | 61 T E ACH RE AD I NG & WR I T I NG Loved this? Try these... v When Stars are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson & Omar Mohamed v Azzi in Betwee n by Sally Garland v Running Out of Time by Simon Cox v Front Desk by Kelly Yang v Who are Refugees and Migrants? What Makes People Leave Their Homes? And Other Big Questions by Michael Rosen & Annemarie Young they are on the point of leaving their home, and at a point in their journey. Remind children to think about how Aggs uses facial expression and body posture in her illustrations to convey emotions. Can pupils mirror this in their freeze-frames? WHAT IF..? These discussion prompts will help children link the global issue of people seeking refuge to their own locality. Their aim is to get the children thinking about what they would do if someone arrived at school needing their help. The outcome of this discussion could be to create posters to put around the setting displaying the class’ values, or welcoming people to their school. Key questions: How do we treat someone who needs help? What are our school or community values? How would we want to be treated if we were in a refugee’s position? THINKINGABOUT PERSPECTIVE Imagine there is a camera pointing at the images. Look at each frame on the page and think about where this ‘camera’ might be positioned. What effect does this create? As a general rule, close-ups are used to show emotions, long shots are used for settings, low angles looking up denote power, high angles looking down show vulnerability. Challenge the children to redraw these frames from a different angle to see how the perspective changes. Or, they could recreate the frames as photos using a camera or tablet. ROLE ON THEWALL This is a fantastic technique to really get to know the characters in the story. To do this you need to draw the outline of a character on the wall. Inside the outline write their fears, feelings, and hopes. Outside the outline write pressures, dangers, obstacles and other external events. This could be revisited at multiple points within the story and be used to track character development. Jo Cummins is an experienced primary school teacher and English leader with a passion for children’s books and mental health awareness. She currently works for a specialist educational provision in Hampshire in a teaching and advisory role. librarygirlandbookboy.com @librarygirlandbookboy as the character. This should include explaining what they decided, their rationale, and the fears. Some drama work using the ‘conscience alley’ or ‘interviewing in-role’ techniques could support pupils with their writing here. Visual stimuli Graphic novels teach children to read pictures in the same way they would read printed text. They need to be able to glean meaning from images, symbols, layout and visual cues – all skills which are vital in today’s online society. But of course, the pages themselves are all mini works of art! There are many ways in which art can be used to deepen the children’s understanding of the characters and plot. Create a ‘missing’ page . The children could create an extra page with an extra scene to slip in between two existing pages. Encourage them to think carefully about using differently-sized panels to highlight key moments, the use of colour to convey mood, how the frames are going to move the story on, and what symbolic imagery they might want to include. ‘The things we carry’ collage . Invite pupils to think about the objects the children take as they flee from their homes. Why do they take the items they do? What are their significance? What items would pupils take if they had to flee? Why? Challenge the children to create a mixed media collage that represents the objects they would take, and the memories carried inside. For example, a photo of a happy time, a teddy from when they were a baby, a scarf that smells of their mother’s perfume. Body language study . Aggs’ illustrations show a whole range of emotions through gesture, face shape and posture. Ask the children to find examples in the panels of characters showing joy, fear, tiredness, anger, etc. Look at how Aggs has communicated those emotions without dialogue. Challenge children to redraw a panel, experimenting with altering the mood by changing characters’ body language and facial expressions. TP to consider the same event from two contrasting points of view, and helps them develop empathy for the characters and their differing perspectives. Pupils need to consider the individual motivations of the characters, their emotions, and how their experiences of safety, fear, and hope may differ. For example, Hannah vs Bea when deciding whether to leave home or not. • Making a moral decision . For this activity, children need to look at a scene where one of the characters needs to make a difficult choice (leaving home, trusting a stranger) and write a reflective piece in-role