If you are teaching pupils to write holiday / travel brochures then look no further than this video below – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBGDmin_38E

It works brilliantly well as part of a ‘Space’ topic and gives opportunity for some fabulous language play – simile and metaphors particularly.  Images taken from the videos are stunning and we use them to mind-map vocabulary along with ‘Descriptosaurus’

This is a valuable purchase – it gives examples of words, phrases and sentences organised under headings such as landscape and character, and then digs deeper into atmosphere and physical features.  Children love using it and it comes with a CD so you can make resources and print.

Back to Pandora.  We used T4W approaches to orally learn a travel brochure / advert which the children then innovated by creating their own planet to visit.

We also wrote information texts about the creatures who live on Pandora that included some beautiful artwork that the class really enjoyed doing. We found it worked best if we made small folding books.  There are lots on Pinterest.  Children seem to enjoy the writing process better in tiny books!!!  The finished products were something that they were very proud of.

Above is the link to some of my folding booklets and other ideas for writing in topic time.

The ideas we came up with for using Pandora were almost endless.  Here are some –

Diary entry as a visitor to Pandora

‘Save Pandora’ persuasive writing piece

Postcards home from a visit

Video an advert / record a radio advert

Create a creature who lives on Pandora

Fact File on a creature

Poems told by the Na’vi

Na’vi perspective of visitors to Pandora

Instructions for trapping a viperwolf

http://james-camerons-avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Pandora

Above is a link to more information on Pandora that can be used by the children to create information texts.