Morris Gleitzman is a popular Australian children's author. His books make his readers laugh, but also make them think about the hard times some kids (and cane toads) have.

Meet Morris and find out about his books on his own website.

This is good activity for the whole class to participate in

1. Go to the Morris Gleitzman Website

2. Go to his Scrapbook and then Read Morris’ A-Z.

3. As a class, talk about the types of words he has chosen as his favourites and the way he has described them.

4. Put the letters of the alphabet in a hat and have each student draw one out to explore.

5. Choose a favourite or interesting word starting with your letter and describe it and why you find it interesting.

6. You might like to use an online dictionary to help you.

7. Wordprocess it to make it look interesting. Experiment with fonts, sizes, colour, italics and shadows.

8. When they are all finished, put them together as a display of your Class A-Z

This a good activity for a group of fanatical ‘MG’ friends

Go to the Morris Gleitzman website.

In a group, browse through the Bookshelf.

Each person selects a different book that you have read and enjoyed.

Go to the page for your book and read the blurb.

Read the chapter extract to choose a short favourite section to quote from and then give a brief cliff hanger introduction that will make others want to read it.

Put these together to write your own blurb for your Morris Gleitzman book. You may like to look at some other book blurbs to give you some ideas.

Your teacher librarian may be interested in letting you display them in your library to advertise his books. Why not ask?

 

This activity works best with groups of eight working in pairs, or groups of four working individually, to start with. You all work together to publish your information.

1. Explore Morris’ Scrapbook to collect information to help make a crossword puzzle.

2. Each pair choose one section to look at: Photo Album, Morris’ Lists, School Days and A-Z.

3. Each pair needs to form 4 or 5 clues and record these with the answers. Get an adult to check that your clues are clear and correctly spelt.

4. When you are all ready go the Discovery School’s Puzzlemaker site

5. Follow the Criss-Cross Puzzle link. Give your puzzle a clear name and set the width and height to 45. Then enter your answers and clues carefully. Proofread before printing. If you have made any mistakes you can go back and fix them now. You can print your finished puzzle from here or copy it into a word document to make any corrections. (If you do that make sure you put the Puzzlemaker site name and address on the bottom of the page.)

Scroll through The Bookshelf and see if there is a book you haven’t read yet. If you find one, then read the extract that is available to see if you think you would like to read the whole book. You can read chapter one online to get started. Check the library OPAC and see if there is a copy available.

1. Find out which countries Morris’ books have been published in. This activity is available on the site so why not see if you can work it out.

2. If you get stuck you might like to try an online foreign language dictionary . To use this you must guess the language you think the word is from and select that country from the drop down box.

3. Use the flags Morris has provided at the top of the page to guide you in selecting countries and the language that the words might be from. If you don’t recognise all the flags you can work out which countries they belong to by going to Flags of the World. Take the link to Flag Detective and work them out.

This is fun to do individually or for the whole class.

1. To do this activity you need to go to the Puffin U.K site.
2. From the ‘Living Room’ find Morris’ I.D. card and read it. You might like to look for some other authors you recognise from the list and read their I.D.s too.
3. Now use the same format to create an I.D. all about you.

If a few of your classmates do this too, then you could bind them together to make a Who Am I? puzzle book. Leave your names off the I.D. cards but complete the other information. See if others can work out which I.D. card belongs to each person.