Hamish and the Worldstoppers by Danny Wallace

Cross-curricular activities inspired by the book

CFE Level 2 (Ages 9-11)

Note to teachers using this resource

This resource is full of cross-curricular activity suggestions to help you explore Hamish and the Worldstoppers with your students. Adapt and use as you see fit! The resource has been produced to help you get the most out of our online Authors Live event with Danny Wallace, but you can use it at any point to engage students with the work of this author.

Don’t worry if you miss the live online event – you can watch it later in our Watch on Demand section: http://www.scottishbooktrust.com/watch-on-demand

Introducing Hamish and the Worldstoppers

Hamish and the Worldstoppers is author and comedian Danny Wallace’s first book for children, he’s written lots for adults already!

Ten year old Hamish lives in the extremely boring town of Starkley where nothing exciting ever happens. Then one day, in the middle of school, the whole world stops. Books. Clocks. People. Everything just stops. Can Hamish work out why this keeps happening and save the world from the evil Terribles who appear each time the world stops before it is too late?

Brimming with fun illustrations by Jamie Littler, Hamish and the Worldstoppers is a gripping adventure jam packed with laughs, monsters and a cast of hilarious characters. You can find out more about Danny and Hamish and the Worldstoppers here: http://worldofhamish.com/

Activities

The Starkley Post Lit 2-28a

Hamish’s home town of Starkley holds the title of fourth most boring town in Britain. The Starkley Post reports on the extremely dull goings on in the town with tantalising news stories like ‘Was that a Moth?’ and ‘Potato Looks a Bit Like a Dog’.

Why not get your pupils to create their own issue of the Starkley Post, complete with exceedingly mundane headlines, articles and illustrations?

Firstly have your pupils take a look at the end pages of Hamish and the Worldstoppers for some brilliantly boring examples of dull news stories from the Starkley Post before having a go at writing their own.

Ask pupils if they can think of the different types of features you might find in a newspaper. Bring in some newspapers to class for pupils to have a look at and see what different types of feature they can find. For example:

 News stories  Sports section  Advertisements  Interviews  Horoscopes  Cartoon strips.

Pupils could create all different types of content for the newspaper, but remember to make it as boring as possible!

Google docs has lots of newspaper templates which pupils can add their articles to so you can create and print a whole class newspaper: https://drive.google.com/templates? type=docs&q=newspaper&sort=user&view=public&urp=https://www.google.co.uk/&pli=1&d drp=1#

Terrible Classroom Takeover Lit 2-09a, Exa 2-03a, Exa 2-05a

Terribles are terrifying space aliens who pause time so that they can steal grown-ups and take over the world. There is no logic or reason to their appearance – some are twelve feet tall ogres with giant lizard tongues, some have monstrous tusks and small beady eyes, some are small and slithery with knobbly scales.

In this task your pupils will create their own Terribles to take over the classroom. Encourage your pupils to think up the most grotesque features they can to make their Terrible extra scary. They could draw or make their Terribles out of plasticine, clay or recycled materials.

Danny Wallace uses lots of brilliant vocabulary to describe how the Terribles move and sound as well as how they look. Each pupil could write a fact file for their Terrible to describe it and alert the Pause Defence Force about its dangers.

To help your pupils get started with describing how their Terrible moves and sounds and to explain its terrifying features you could first come up with ideas all together as a class. Ask pupils to think of all of the different words they could describe how a creature moves, and to look at Hamish and the Worldstoppers for ideas. In the book you can find words like slink, slither, flopped, clambered, thundered and creaked and hopefully this will inspire your pupils will come up with many more!

Terrible Fact File: Height: Weight: Terrifying features: How it moves: How it sounds:

Once pupils have created their Terrible and completed their fact file they could write a scene or draw a comic featuring their monster, describing what happened when the terrible took over the classroom. For some top tips on writing gripping action scenes take a look at this brilliant video by Astrosaurs author Steve Cole: www.scottishbooktrust.com/blog/teachers- librarians/2015/01/steve-coles-tips-for-writing-great-action-scenes

Budding cartoonists can watch illustrator Martin Brown’s tips for creating your own cartoons: www.scottishbooktrust.com/blog/teachers-librarians/2015/06/martin-brown- everyone-can-draw

Drama Activity: The Pause Game Exa 2-12a

This is a game to play in PE or outside in the playground as the children will need space to move around.

A small group of children will take on the role of Worldstopper and everyone else an everyday character you might see in the street.

Firstly ask all of the children to think about how the monsters might move and to have a go at acting out different actions for example stomping, slithering or creeping as you call them out. If you have done the Terrible Classroom Takeover activity above children could act out the characteristics of the monsters they invented in the classroom.

You could get children to discuss what kind of characters they might see in the street. For example, a postman, shop keeper, family on an outing, business person, etc. They can have a go at acting these people out.

To play the game the pupils walk around the “street” acting out their roles and interacting with each other until the teacher shouts “Pause”. When this happens all of the children have to freeze and the children being the Worldstoppers appear, acting out their best monster movements. They are allowed to walk, stomp, creep or slither amongst the other children but can’t touch them. If they spot anyone moving during the Pause then that child is out.

Creative Writing Activity: What would you do if the world stopped? Eng 2-31a

On page 48 of Hamish and the Worldstoppers Hamish imagines all of the things he could do during a Pause: invent a flying car, come up with a cure with all known diseases or eat a lot of sweets. In this activity pupils will imagine what they would do if the world stopped and create a diary to report on their experiences. Choose an exact time during class for the world to stop and ask pupils write about what they would do right at that moment if everything and everyone in the classroom froze apart from them.

Make a Flip-book Animation Exa 2-05a, Tch 2-12a

Ask your pupils to have a look at the raven and clock illustrations at the bottom of each page in Hamish and the World Stoppers, do they notice anything about them? If you flick through the book the illustrations make a flip-book animation!

Making a flip-book animation is very simple. All you need is a pack of post-it notes and some pens. This you-tube video has an easy to follow explanation of how to make a simple flip-book with a moving dot or stick figures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Njl-uqnmBGA

Once your pupils have got the hang of making flip-books they could have a go at animating a character or scene from Hamish and the Worldstoppers.

Here is an example of a simple stick figure action flip-book which works really well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO8MlSjo0T0

Create a Book Trailer Tch 2-04a,Eng 2-19a, Eng 2-24a, Eng 2-31a

Book trailers are a fantastic way of encouraging pupils to engage with a book and combine a number of different skills from the curriculum.

A book trailer is just like a film trailer, giving a taster of a book for its potential audience.

There is a brilliant book trailer for Hamish and the Worldstoppers on Danny Wallace’s website: http://worldofhamish.com/

Scottish Book Trust has created a brilliant resource pack on creating book trailers which can be found at: http://www.scottishbooktrust.com/learning/learning-resources/resource/how-to-create- book-trailers-video-series

Once your pupils have made their trailers you can hold a film screening - watching all of the trailers together. Encourage your pupils to discuss the trailers after they have seen them:

 How well has each trailer captured character, setting, atmosphere?

 Does the trailer make you want to read the book?

What Keeps the Earth Spinning?

In this task your pupils will investigate the relationship between the sun and the Earth and think about how the tilt and position of the Earth affects the seasons.

This simple video from BBC education shows the orbit of the Earth around the sun and why the tilt of the Earth creates our seasons. www.bbc.co.uk/education/clips/z6vfb9q

After watching this video you could demonstrate further by using this hands-on activity from National Geographic to: http://education.nationalgeographic.co.uk/activity/the-reason- for-the-seasons/

Royal Museums Greenwich also has lots of learning resources and classroom activities to help pupils get to grips with the seasons and the rotation of the Earth: http://www.rmg.co.uk/schools/royal-observatory/classroom-resources/key-stage-2

And you could always use song! https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=124&v=3JdWlSF195Y

Reading Recommendations Lit 2-11a

If you enjoyed Hamish and the Worldstoppers you might like to take a look at this book list for some ideas for further reading:

Hilarious Reads: 8 Books to make you laugh out loud http://www.scottishbooktrust.com/reading/book-lists/8-hilarious-reads-8-11