Next term we will be creating cafe culture conversations with Year 6.They have practised food,drink and key request phrases and polite at table language throughout their language learning career so far. It is all part of our SOW

Summer Term for Year 6 is hectic and this is an opportunity to have a one off and creative lesson all based on the Mad Hatter's Tea Party.If you follow my blogs you will know that we have connections with Lewis Carroll here in the area and indeed in the centre of Warrington ,we have a stone sculpture of the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. Last term some of our Year 6 wrote some marvelous descriptive pieces based on Alice in Wonderland and linked to the launch of the Royal Mail commemorative stamps

Alice in Wonderland and describing people in speaking and writing

A Mad Hatter's Tea Party suggests crazy food and lively conversation with unusual guests!

The first thing we need is our tea pot ...because in our tea pot are all the phrases we ar going to need to create our lively conversation-

1.Preparing the table with an "At the Table" conversation framework

Create for yourself a large card tea pot!

In the centre of your tea pot you need to blu-tac all the phrases that the children might need to build the framework of their lively conversation.Revisit the at table phrases from Y6 Autumn 2,the polite request phrases from Y3 Summer 1 and the picnic phrases from Y3 Summer 2.

Can the children help you to identify and organise the phrases out of a crazy tea pot and in to a sensible order for dialogue based on sharing food?

2.Laying out the food for our Tea Party

Ask the children to now complete their own table cloths for the picnic- this is a piece of paper really but make it table cloth style and like a checked cloth....

The children need to work in pairs or fours with one table cloth.

Can the children lay out their chosen food items on their table cloths and word squares- each square a different food item word in the target language.

(The children need to revisit prior learning and brainstorm foods and drinks they have practised and used in their work during the last three years - so in our case this could be Hungry Giant's breakfast (Y3) ,Going on a Picnic (Y3),buying an ice cream (Y4,the market (Y5),the Christmas meal in Y6 ,the authentic foods from the Cafe Culture focus in Summer term Y6 etcetra).

3.Creating our Mad Hatter's Tea Party Menu

Each guest at the table needs to invent at least three fantastical food items using the food items written as words on their table cloths:

For example in French:

un croissant bleu

une tarte multicolore au choufleur

une grande glace rouge et piquante

Can each guest bring their item as a word card to the table with a picture of the item and place it in top of the table cloth.

4.Creating the table conversation

Now the guests at the table can build their conversation and select items they want to try.They must add opinions about the items they select - as if they have tasted them of course!

Sit back and watch your Mad Hatter's Tea Party performances! And maybe share them with another year group too!

What a gift these new commemorative stamps are to celebrate 150 years since Lewis Carroll told his first story about Alice in Wonderland!

In the new DfE POS we are asked at KS2 to offer children the opportunity to:

"speak in full sentences"

"ask and answer questions"

"engage in conversations"

"describe people in speaking and writing ""

The article on CBBC news about the stamps is clear and child friendly with brilliant pictures of the stamps.

Click here!

Here is a perfect way to engage our young learners in speaking,writing and creating descriptions... and as I write I am about 7 miles from Daresbury ,where the village celebrates its connections to Lewis Carroll. Indeed there is a strained glass window to celebrate Alice in wonderland in the church and our local town Warrington has a stone table statue celebrating "The Mad Hatter's tea party"

Thanks to Ana and Emilie here are some of the main characters' names in French and Spanish

French:

Alice - Alice

Madhatter- le chapelier fou

Cheshire cat- le chat du Cheshire

The white rabbit - le lapin blanc

Spanish:

Alice- Alice

Madhatter- El sombrero loco

Cheshire Cat -- el gato de Cheshire

The white rabbit- el conejo blanco

So first of all let's have a tea party!

Of course we could act out what we see and hold a simple food, cafe or at table conversation.

We can use all the language we have practised based on foods, likes, dislikes and if you follow our SOW table language from Year 6 to animate this picture of the table with speech bubbles and to create the perfect menu too.....

Now let's create our own stained glass window

Let's investigate the series of stained glass windows in Daresbury church with characters from Alice in Wonderland.Take a look at

the stained glass window here

Let's change the speech bubbles and add our own questions and answers between the characters - as simple as necessary of course ( ranging from greetings,farewells, feelings, likes, dislikes, the time etc)
Let's make it a piece opf Art with tissue [paper and clear glue and add our speech bubbles and writing
Let's bring the pictures to life by importing the pictures in to APPs such as Tiny Tap and adding a recording of the children's voices as sound patches over the the speech bubbles in character.Can they say the words in character too?

Let's explore the characters!

Show them the film trailers in the target language! (Alice et les pays des Merveilles is French version and Alice en el pais de Maravillas is the Spanish version and the German version is Alice im Wunderland)

Show them the stamps and the images

A simple description:

Ask the children who are moving on learners (Year 4 /Year 5) to use bi-lingual dictionaries to write two simple sentences using the verb to be and two simple sentences using the verb to have about a character.We could record our spoken language on

Yakit for kids

. Here is an example......

Alice est jolie

Alice est petite

Alice a les cheveux blondes

Alice a les yeux bleus

Adding challenge to the description

Let's see if the more advanced young learners (Year 5/6) can complete some present tense sentence descriptions about the characters and add at least one independently written sentence of their own.Here is an example :

le lapin blanc est..............

le lapin blanc porte..........

Le lapin blanc n'aime pas .........

.......................................

Now let's bring the characters to life with animation using

Funny Movie Maker

where you import your picture of the character and add spoken words (so the children's description).There is an android version of this too.

nd let's keep a written record of the descriptions

as posters in a class book of Alice in Wonderland or
as our own commemorative A4 stamps with a picture of the character and the words and sentences around the character that the children have written in the target language.
as PicCollage posters with imported additional pictures of the book in the target language from the web!