PRIMARY RESOURCES: ACTIVITY 5 - ALANNA AND THE TREE

TEACHER NOTES

Alanna and the Tree is designed for use with children aged 7-12. It was written by Fergus Early.

For information on performances or the full Alanna education pack, including a CD and all the songs, contact Green Candle direct.

The material is very flexible and could be used as the basis of cross-curricular work or adapted to produce a series of collective worships.

For RE content, look at the series of Jewish quotations on the worksheet and use this as the basis for a discussion on how religious believers might react to environmental problems. How is the environment viewed in different faiths? How is the environment celebrated in different faiths (e.g. Harvest festivals)? N.B. Some of the organisations in the web listings may provide useful information. The REEP book Faiths for a Future (RMEP 1998 ISBN 1-85175-163-7) is also helpful. Further books can be found on the booklist on this site.

Two further suggestions for activities using ICT are made at the end of the 'About Brazil' section. Help in making class ICT resources can be found in Vivi Lachs excellent book Making Multimedia in the Classroom: A Teachers' Guide Routledge Falmer 2000, ISBN 0-415-21684-2 and in Paul Hopkins' book on the same subject published by Stanley Thorne 2000.

Planning a multimedia production would also be a good way of initiating cross-curricular work between co-ordinators or heads of departments in science, music, art, ICT and RE. Even if you cannot finalise a production, it can be very stimulating to go through the process of deciding what could be done on a topic (e.g. on a CD-ROM providing illustrated material covering several subject areas by and for children of different abilities). This has the added advantage of helping several of you at once fulfil your ICT training requirements!

At a simple class level, this would be a good subject for producing material differentiated by ability. For example, a lesson and homework or series of them, might include, in order:-

a group telling of the Alanna story and introduction to the songs

a research session for facts and pictures about the subject

discussion of specifically religious aspects, e.g . What different faith groups believe about the environment, what different faith organisations do about it, what teachings are found in the various holy books

small group work to decide content of resource to be produced. Each group should include pupils with differing skills and abilities
- exploring ways in which the material can be presented effectively
- enabling each person to identify how they can contribute something which they are good at e.g. art, writing, ICT, in however simple a way. Perhaps they could compose a song or rainforest sounds.

work to finalise content

production of display and/or ICT material.