SCBWI Caribbean South.. Blog: Ready-Go-Read!

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STORYTELLING ADVENTURES...premieres!
The Scottish-Island Girl
By Joanne Gail Johnson
Sponsored by Nestle / KLIM

For more photos click here

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Monady 21st March Joanne is introduced at St. Helena Library to the children of Grade One at The St. Helena Hindu Primary School. The Scottish-Island Girl is a great choice for children aged 6-8 years, so these 5-7 year olds loved hearing about the Lizzy's birthday adventure to see the giant leather back turtles.

Have you ever been to the beach? What does it sound like? Someone is calling on my sea phone!

Warm Up Activity:

SOUNDSCAPES Together the children made "soundscapes" - a great way for creating atmosphere and getting kids involved, (read - break the ice- smile!)

The teacher serves as conductor and assigns children to make different sounds. As the groupgets the hang of it you can invite a child to conduct the sounds. Eventually you can make soundscapes for other settings - eg a book on a farm; in the jungle; with a city / outer space setting etc.

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Our beachscape went like this - What do the crashing waves sound like?

"Splush! Crassshhhhh!

"What else do we hear at the beach? Wind? Yes! "Can you sound like the wind?

"woooooo.....sssssssshhhh..."

Birds? Yes! We hear seagulls and pelicans at the beach!

"Squawk! Tweet!"

That's it!

Now let's put it all together!

When I move my arms up like this we'll get louder and down like this means softer.

What signal shall I make for "STOP!"

OK so this (signal) means silence everyone!

We listen to the first few pages of the read along CD. Children TUNE IN.

Listen to the different "accents" - Lizzy's voice sounds Scottish and Alex sound more like us, like a Trini. We hear the Scottish bag pipes and then the Trinbago steelpan. We learn that Lizzy is not sure she likes Trinidad yet.....

Miss Shanti (a teacher) gets involved too. She shows the pictures while Joanne continues the story reading out loud.

The children discover that Lizzy changes her mind after her beach adventure. She loves both Trinidad and Scotland.

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The characters in the book were born in different places in the world. This offers a great introduction to Geography even for very young readers.

This is the World, yes! You are very smart. This is called a globe.

Have you been to Tobago? And Canada? It snows there? Yes it does.

I have put a red push pin to mark Trinidad and a green one for Scotland. The blue area on the globe represents the sea.

Can you see just how far Lizzy had to travel to get from Scotland to Trinidad?

In the story Lizzy told us how things FELT.

The stones hurt her feet at first, remember?

The water felt cool around her ankles. When they touched the giant turtle's head do you remember what she said? Yes, it felt rough. What about the turtle eggs? That's right they felt like jelly, not like hard chicken eggshells.

ACTIVITY TIE IN: FEEL IT!

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Kids get to experience the sense of touch and the information we receive all the time, just from feeling.

Fill a box/ bag with objects that relate in someway to the story. Then have each child either close eyes (no peeking) or blindfolded, and take and object out . They examine it with their hands and identify: A camera! Sun glasses! A toy car! a stone! a plastic coconut tree! Something to wash the dishes? A sponge, yes! ( Throw in some everyday objects too!)

What next? Get gift bag from Nestle! Cool!