Cressida's Classroom by David Drew

Teaching ideas

Reading the book

Show the children the cover. This is the way we normally see our classroom, from eye level. Ask the class to find an easel, a bird, a world globe, a clock, and so on. Where is Cressida? (At the door)

Turn to the title page (page 1). Ask the children, "Why would there be a tortoise on this page?"

Then turn to the first double-page (pages 2-3). Before you read the words, point to the left page (page 2). Ask if this is the same place as on the cover or a different place? (It is the same, but seen from overhead. It is a bird's eye view.) Ask children to find some items on page 2 that they had seen on the cover, such as the globe and the clock. Why do they look different?

Can the children find Cressida in the picture?

Now move to the opposite page (page 3). Again, is this the same place? (Yes. It is the same classroom, but in a map view.) Explain that a map is like a bird's eye view, but it leaves out some things and highlights others. In this map, the tables are highlighted. In the key to the map the color shows you which things are the tables.

Now you turn to read the words.

Cressida's classroom has . . . tables,

Point to the comma at the end, showing that the sentence is not finished.

Turn the page. On pages 4-5, point to the small picture at the top of page 5 and ask the children to say what the word is (cushions).

Ask, "Where are the cushions in the bird's eye view? Where are they in the map?"

Ask why the cushions are purple and striped in the bird's eye view but plain pink in the map. In a map, things can be any color we like. The important rule is that if cushions are shown as pink in the key, then only cushions can be pink on the map. This is so that the reader will not be confused. What if we had colored both the tables and the cushions pink in the map? (We might not be able to tell which is which.) The children need to know this when they come to draw their own maps.

Point out the scale at the bottom of the page. (In the US edition of the book this scale is in yards.) Ask the children to estimate the size of the tables and cushions. "Are the tables more than a yard long?" (Yes) "What about the cushions?" (No. They're about half a yard long.)

Turn the page. Continue to the end of the book, where we will hunt for the tortoise.

What next?

You might ask the children to draw a map of their own classroom. Leave the book on display so that they can check how to draw map symbols for doors and windows, how to make a key and scale, and other details.

A longer discussion on map making can be found in the new edition of I See What You Mean, Chapter 5.