Claude: Going for Gold learning resource
Creative, fun activities inspired by Alex T Smith’s book
CFE Levels Early – First (ages 3-7)
Resource created by Scottish Book Trust
About this resource
This resource contains cross-curricular activity suggestions to help you explore Claude: Going for Gold with your learners in library and classroom activities. 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 Alex T Smith, but you can use it at any point to engage pupils with this book.
You can watch the event on 3rd May 2017 – here is the link to register for free: bit.ly/AuthorsAlex
Don’t worry if you miss the event – you’ll be able to watch it soon afterwards in our Watch On Demand section: bit.ly/ALiveVds
About Alex T Smith and Claude
Alex T Smith is the author of the phenomenally popular Claude series of books, the first three of which have been published in fourteen languages across the world! He emerged on the scene with a bang, winning the MacMillan Prize for Children’s Picture Book Illustration in the final year of his Illustration degree. He has collected a number of awards for his children’s picture books, some of which have been read on TV during the Bedtime Hour on the CBeebies channel.
Activities
Inspire your pupils to write stories
Going for Gold is, like all of the Claude series, an adventure story. Claude wants an adventure, and he doesn’t have to look too hard to find it – in fact, it’s right there in his home town.
Ask your pupils what they think an adventure story is. What has to be in a story for it to be an adventure – does it have to have a long journey to a place far away?
One of the main elements of an adventure story is the main characters doing something new and exciting.
Help your pupils create a new adventure story as a class. You can use the book covers for the rest of the Claude series to do this! At the end of Going for Gold on the inside of the book jacket, you’ll find the covers of the rest of the books. Ask pupils to study these. What new and exciting things do they think will happen to Claude in these books? Who will he meet, what surprises and problems will he come across, and what new and exciting experiences might he have?
Older pupils can then try writing or drawing their own adventure stories. With younger pupils, you can continue the story building session, asking them questions at each juncture to help them build the story. For a more detailed explanation of storybuilding, look at page 3 of our Catherine Rayner learning resource: bit.ly/CatRaynerResource
Inspire other classes to read the books
Your pupils could inspire others to check out the Claude series by creating and delivering a class presentation about the books and the stories they came up with in the first activity.
Ask your pupils to work together to create small presentations explaining more about Claude: who the character is, who the author is, what Going for Gold is about, and finally the story ideas they had inspired by the covers of the other books.
Get them to deliver these presentations to other classes. Encourage them to ask other pupils what they think will happen in the other Claude books, based on the covers.
You could also get your pupils to put together a performance of Going for Gold to show to the other class. The drama resources on our website may be helpful for this – you’ll find a short resource with fun little drama activities here: bit.ly/performpicturebooks. You’ll also find a comprehensive guide to adapting picture books for the stage here: bit.ly/PicBookPlays
Other ideas to inspire reading
There are a lot of books in the Claude series, and this gives you a great opportunity to keep excitement going about reading in your class. You could have a Claude book of the week displayed in your class library, and get pupils to design hand written notes or bookmarks to tell others about the book.
You could survey your pupils to find out which Claude book was the class favourite, and ask pupils to design a trophy for the winning book. You could also use a survey to find out which pupils didn’t like the books so much, and take the opportunity to speak about how to choose something else to read. The information on this page, particularly under the ‘Strategies to help students choose books’ section, is very sound and helpful: bit.ly/HelpMeSelect
If you and your class loved Claude: Going for Gold
Try the books on our list of sporty titles: