Photos

Mini-picture/Pen top play activity

These mini pictures are available in the 'Materials' section. You can print off the colour versions seen in the picture or black and white colourable ones.

Details of the activity can be found in the 'Teachers' Notes' section.

Pen top mini pictures for the 'Groon' story.

These pictures come from the Fifth Barcelona ELT Conference 2009, held at the British Council. Many thanks to all the teachers who attended - and for agreeing to let me post the snaps!

You can see here that this group have the mini-pictures and pens laid out on the table. They are each playing different characters and take turns to narrate the story to the rest of us.

A group of teachers tell the 'Groon' story using the pen top mini pictures.

It's quite complicated because there are a lot of pens and mini pictures. You can see here the teachers are using the screen to check the last part of the story. To make things easier for your students you can also limit the amount of mini pictures per group.

This is done by deleting some of the mini-pictures before you print them off.

Balloon actors.

The creation of a Reg balloon character!

Teachers prepare characters for the 'Balloon' story.

The 'Balloon' story being acted out!

At the same time as we act out the story, we show the slides on the projector. The rest of the group are involved too, they are narrating the story as we go.

Here you can see the purple balloon is too high for Reg.

Teachers act out the story with balloon actors.

Smol, who we have drawn on a small white balloon, and Lellow are yet to appear in the story, so they're waiting in the wings.

Now it's Lellow's turn to jump!

You can find details of this activity in the 'Teachers' Notes' section and a list of simplified stage directions in the 'Extra Materials' section.

Now Smol has crawled upside down across the cieling and is about to step on to the purple balloon and bring it down to Reg.

Once again, many many thanks to all the teachers who attended the session!

Reg, Lellow and Land Rovers.

I'm going to take the opportunity to tell you a personal anecdote. This might be a little self-indulgent but hey, you might enjoy it as well!

I was born in the United Arab Emirates. I was also a bit of a lively child when it came to bedtime and as a result my parents spent hours driving me round the streets of Sharjah in their Land Rover, trying to get me to

nod off.

We left the Middle East when I was two, and, being very little, I have no real memories of it apart from a couple of snapshot mental images that I have always maintained came from when I was very small. The most vivid of the two was looking down and seeing a red button and a yellow button in a motor vehicle. That was all I knew, but the image was strong enough to stay with me for over 35 years!

I once mentioned this to my Dad and he said it was possible that there were such coloured 4 wheel drive controls in the jeep. I didn't think about the matter much more until I was sitting at my laptop the other day and it struck me that it was rather an odd coincidence - that my first memory is of a red and yellow circle, and that for my first children's stories I also chose a red and yellow circle. Just a coincidence? Probably - but enough of a one that it made me laugh out loud!

So I popped onto Google Images and started looking for 1970's Land Rover interiors, to see, if by chance, I could spot a red and yellow button anywhere...

It took me less than two minutes to find this one. Can you spot them?

They just need the eyes and the smiling mouths - that's all!

Looking at the pictures now, I've got a feeling I spent hours staring down at these little circles.

I enjoyed finding these images immensely, not only for that feeling of 'I knew it!' but also because in doing so, it has dawned on me that here I might be looking at the original inspiration for Reg and Lellow, my first one-year-old memory!

Cheers to the photographers! I don't know you, but I sure am grateful for the fact you took those pics!

http://www.landroversonly.com/forums/attachments/f7/20467d1236795854-center-seat-cubby-box-interior1.jpg

APAC Convention February 2010

On Friday and Saturday 26/27th of Feb 2010, the Association of Teachers of English in Catalonia (APAC) kindly allowed me to present two sessions on Reg and Lellow. Special thanks to them and to the British Council for sponsoring the sessions.

I began by showing how the stories can be represented in simple sketches in chalk on the board, with the audience helping me colour in the scenes. The idea here is that if your computer crashes, if your projector blows or if you find yourself in a class with neither of these things, then all is not lost!

Most of the pictures here show teachers participating in the Ready? activity (see the 'New Stories' section for this). It involved them dancing, hiding, sitting still and turning round, just like the characters on the screen. In these sessions we used balloons but in your classes you could also use the flashcards for the activity which I'll be posting up soon.