Children at play: Activity 2

The theatre

Pantomimes are just as popular with children today as they were for children in Victorian times. Watching a pantomime is a nice way to start the Christmas season. During the Victorian period, children would go to the theatre with a chaperone that would most likely be a nanny.

This picture is from "The Graphic Portfolio", which was illustrated and published in 1876. Click on the image for a larger version (111kb) which you can print off for classroom use. The activity suggested for this image involves looking at dialogue, speech marks and expression. It encourages the students to empathise with one of the children or adults in the picture and imagine what they may be saying and how they may have said it.

Activities

This activity can be implemented into the Literacy Hour in a number of ways. Character analysis (year 4 term 1), speech marks (year 3 term 1, term 3) and as an extension activity to look at dialogue (year 5 term 1) whereby the children take the speeches and place them into a play script.

Print a large copy of the picture shown above (click on the thumbnail to get a large copy to print), and give each child a copy of the picture. Ask them to choose one of the children from the picture, cut them out and stick them in the box provided.

Now download the writing frame provided in Microsoft Word format by clicking here. Print a copy for each pupil.

They have to imagine what they think the child may be saying and write the speech on the lines provided inside the speech marks. They then have to think about how that child may have said what they have written.

There is a selection of words to choose from, however, it would be more challenging if the children are given use of a thesaurus.