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Day 1: Monday (Everyone)
Award-winning author and Australia’s Children’s Laureate of 2020-2021 Ursula Dubosarsky introduces the wonder of writing plays and the amazing, fascinating, funny, and wonderful worlds she creates for them. She’ll reveal the secrets behind writing her entertaining, popular, and easy-to-perform plays adapted from Roman and Greek mythology that provide a huge range of opportunities for learning.
Vox Pop Video
Top 3 Tips
Download to print Ursula's Top 3 Tips!
Read Ursula's work in The School Magazine's 'Explore' library page.
Student Activities
Activity 1. Introduce Ursula Dubosarsky to students by watching her Vox Pop Video.
Activity 2. Separate your class for small group reading. A complete list of Ursula’s Greco-Roman plays from our website’s Explore page should be shared with the class for them to find and read out loud a play amongst their small group. The focus should be on their tone of voice, facial expressions and having fun bringing the characters to life. Give students plenty of time to discuss, plan, and practice their interpretations of the play in small groups.
Play Suggestions
Stage 2
- When the Girl Who Talked Too Much Met the Boy Who Loved Himself
- The Boy with the Golden Arrow
Stage 3
- If you have the hard copy publication Tales of All Kinds: The World of Ursula Dubosarsky at your school, read the play The Statue Who Came to Dinner
- The Fastest Girl in the World
- The A-Mazing Ball of Red Wool
- Arachne, Spider-Girl
- King Midas and the Whispering Grass
- The Boy Who Could Fly
- The Goose that was Nearly Cooked
- The Very Very Very Very Very Hungry Man
- The Story of Io, the Girl who was Turned into a Cow
Activity 3. Direct each Student Group to perform one scene in a play to their class. Encourage students to create props if they like, such as headdresses, flowers, horns, or swords made from paper.
Activity 4. Discuss Ursula’s Top 3 Tips with your class. Ask students to create and write the next scene for the play they had chosen to perform by using Ursula’s Tips as a clever guide.
- Tell students to use this planning scene scaffold for their scriptwriting to help them plan the action of their new scene.
- Tell students to use this writing scene scaffold for their scriptwriting to help them create their new scene with dialogue and stage directions.
- Please note: those students requiring more support may like to work in pairs or small groups to complete the task. Also, the new scene doesn’t need to run over the entire three pages supplied.
- Option for students to perform their new scene.
More information
Ursula Dubosarsky is an Australian children’s writer who has written over 60 books and won many prizes, in Australia and overseas. Her happiest job was working as an editor for the NSW School Magazine. She is the current Australian Children’s Laureate. We have published a new publication to celebrate Ursula's achievements called Tales of All Kinds: The World of Ursula Dubosarsky!
You can find out more about Ursula Dubosarsky and her writing on her website and on the Australian Children's Laureate website honouring her work.
You can learn more about The School Magazine's new publication Tales of All Kinds: The World of Ursula Dubosarsky on our website.
And, we have 140 author signed copies of Tales of All Kinds left! Nab these signed copies for your class from our Online Shop before they sell out! First in, best dressed!
Student Gallery
You can view our Student Gallery displaying the work of students who participated in the festival.
Schools are encouraged to contribute to the gallery display. Teachers should submit selected work their students have created as a result of our literary festival to the email [email protected] with the subject line ‘TSMLitFest–SCHOOL NAME—Student Gallery.