For many children, drawing the moment they remember best is a key to remembering words and phrases from the script that can broaden their own vocabulary.

Working with the children to display all their best remembered moments in chronological order encourages them to think about the structure of the story.

Drawing maps of the journies that Jack makes - and the different terrains he might pass through as he walks the road - has proved useful to schools both as a springboard for imaginative work and as a starting point for a more formal geography exercise.

Physically re-creating the events of the play has helped many children discover the narrative structure - the cliff-hangers, the moments of tension, the repetitions.

Schools have made use of the physical approach as a route to developing original dialogue and other writing. Indeed, one school is busy re-writing the play for a cast of a hundred as their Christmas spectacular.

Diary writing, from one of the characters' point of view, and imagining different endings have been particularly fruitful exercises.

The themes and meaning of the story are explored by small groups of children re-enacting incidents from the play in their own words. The scenes are used to develop the children's ability to articulate how it feels to be a particular character. Those watching are asked to interpret what they think is happening by describing how the characters look and what the characters do.

Why does mother tell Jack that's it time for him to go? Is mother glad to see Jack go? Why does the Farmer's-Wife want Jack to stay? Does Jack manage to hide is fear of the Giant-Monster?

The production style is representational rather than realistic. There are carefully selected props and images to give an impression of the world of the play. But characters are essentially represented through body shape and quality of voice.

How can children use their bodies to be old or young, little or huge? How will their body shapes affect their voices? How do different body shapes make them feel?

Some of the most creative work that schools do revolves around unanswered questions in the play.

For example, what happened to the old lady when the castle became golden again? Were Jack and the brother friends? Why didn't Jack ask his mother to move to the castle?

We've built a number of larger projects with schools around unanswered questions in several of our plays.

We’re often able to answer questions immediately after a performance but schools have then followed this up with e-mail dialogue, developing the children’s IT skills as well as concentrating their minds on particular aspects of the production.

contact us

Our post-show question and answer sessions have been used as press-calls for the school magazine.

One school in particular took a very formal approach. The organiser of the event (the headteacher) and some "general public" (children from other years) were interviewed alongside us by a band of well-prepared journalists who wrote up the "press conference" on the school website .