Mr Chicken Goes to Paris

The monstrous and gentile Mr Chicken tours around the tourist attractions of Paris, unaware of the crowds watching him.

1.

Prior to reading, set the context for the story by asking about students' experiences with crowds or very large groups of people. Some students may have attended games or concerts in stadia, been on airplanes, stood in queues at theme parks or train stations, or attended church with large congregations. Ask them to think about large crowds that are organised into rows and large groups that are just an unorganised crowd. Introduce or review the concept of array and the organisation of a group into rows of equal length. Ask students to role play by arranging themselves as if they were sitting on an airplane, sitting in pews at church, and parking their cars at a car park.

2.

Introduce the book and place the word 'array' on the board or in the modelling book. Ask one student to be a recorder and make notes when someone notices an array in the story.

3.

Share the book with your students, stopping to attend to the various arrays encountered by the main character.

For example:

• On page 1, the unfolded map presents as a 4x4 array.
• On page 3, the airplane has people seated in rows of 3.
• People on the bus and boats are in rows, but the crowd in the museum is an unorganised crowd.
• The architecture in the background includes arrays of windows and arches.

4.

Ask students to work in pairs or triads and create a travel array. Hand out a context or mode of transport (Mr Chicken goes to Paris CM) and a number of travellers to each group. Ask them to think of all the possible arrays they could make and record them on the back of their sheet of paper. Then choose one array to illustrate and create a drawing of how the group would look. For larger numbers, the individual people can be represented by circles or smiley faces (use repeated addition or multiplication facts too), and the cars can be represented by rectangles or stickers. Numbers can be changed to reflect the multiplication level at which your students are confident.

5.

When groups have completed their arrays, ask them to present their drawings to the class and compare the array they chose with the options that were available to them. Also, compare the differences between groups that may have had the same number.

6.

Ask students to have their “array antennae” tuned in to spot arrays during reading times, looking for examples in other books. Ask them to add any books with arrays in the illustrations to a display bookshelf or table to share with others.