Flat Stanley

 One of the best projects that we have enjoyed in Year Three this year is based on Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown. I found a copy of Flat Stanley: Three Books in One and I immediately felt it would provide real inspiration and would allow the children to produce some great work during the last few weeks in school.


These are the activities that we completed:

• We read the book together, with the children taking turns to read the story. We discussed the themes of the story and its realism (or not).
• We wrote play scripts based on parts of the book after looking at a play script version (Flat Stanley: Play (Take Part) and comparing the features of play script writing with the book itself. 
• When Stanley travelled around the world we pretended we were Stanley and sent postcards back home to mum and dad.
• We wrote instructions for how to catch a museum thief.
• We looked at the picture of Stanley flying like a kite in the picture book version of the story (Flat Stanley). We read the description of Stanley flying in the wind. Using a video of a carrier bag 'dancing' in the wind we wrote a similar paragraph about the movement of a bag. The children wrote some great descriptive writing.
  
• We wrote a newspaper report about Stanley stopping the museum robbery. (We entered our reports in a local writing competition for journalism and three of the class won awards!)
• We used the Flat Stanley iPhone app to take some pictures of Flat Stanley in our school. We then wrote letters to a school in Cornwall (thanks @purplelady1979) to share information all about the school. We received letters from our new friends as well.
• We designed our own flat characters and wrote short stories about how they came to be flat.

The whole project was real fun and it was great to have a real reason for writing. The work produced was fabulous and I'm pleased that it kept the children focused and enjoying their writing during a very busy summer term.