UNITY — A little book, much loved by children, entitled Flat Stanley inspired a creative project. This popular project was initiated in 1995 by Dale Hubert, a Grade 3 teacher in London, Ont. Hubert received the Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching Excellence in 2001 for the Flat Stanley project.
The Flat Stanley project inspired Ms. Poppleton of Unity Public School in Unity, but doesn’t define her project.
Ms. Poppleton said, “The book, Flat Stanley, by Jeff Brown was written in 1964. It celebrated its 40th anniversary just last year. However I had never heard or seen the book until February 2006, when I was at a teacher’s convention in Saskatoon. I can’t take any credit whatsoever for coming up with this interesting project for the Grade 2 class.”
Of course, it all starts with reading the book Flat Stanley and learning how this character learns to live as a flat character within his home and community and the adventures he experiences. This association makes a magical setting for students to dive into the adventure with their own flat characters.
Poppleton recognized the creativity captured in this project, the enthusiasm it could create and the fun it would generate for students participating. Students create a flat character of themselves. They are assigned a journal and encouraged to take or send their flat character on a grand adventure. What evolves is magical.
Poppleton is quick to clarify, “There are thousands of schools throughout the world that take part in this project. In our own area, I know Wilkie, Cut Knife and Macklin are other schools who have also participated in a flat self project. Flat Stanley can be found on Wikipedia, there are flat Stanley websites and now there are even a couple flat Stanley apps. This is not a new project by any means.”
Ms. Poppleton explained, “At the beginning of the year in September I read the Flat Stanley book to the Grade 2 class. Stanley gets flattened one night in his sleep when a bulletin board falls on him. As he lives his life as a flat person, one of the benefits is being able to travel to California in an envelope. This is when I introduce the idea of making a flat self that can travel around. So the children make a flat self, we laminate them; get a journal ready and I send some information notes home.
“Parents are to start off the project by giving the flat self to someone who is going travelling or who lives in a different community. Parents have the choice of either having that first person pass it onto another person to take part in the project or else they ask the first traveller to bring it back home and the family finds another traveller to send it.
“As flat selves travel throughout the year, the person travelling with them is supposed to send a postcard to the school to show where the flat self is. That way we can keep track of where different people have travelled. During the year, some of my students will bring their flat self journal to school and share a little bit of their adventures during show and share time, but since some keep travelling right until May, we usually wait until June to share our travel experiences.”
With students receiving postcards from the travels of their flat self and having their journal returned after each trip, they are ravenous to read of the adventure their flat self has been on. This project excites even the shyest student, inspires the students to read as they are anxious to read about their latest adventure and helps create excitement about both reading and writing as students yearn to both read and communicate about their adventure.
The travel logs are marked on a map in their classroom and students can learn about all of the places their flat selves have travelled as they share their adventures. Postcards are pinned up from all of the students’ flat characters. Photos are shared of where their flat character has been and what they have been doing. The entire project is focused on literacy and multiple subjects of learning.
Flat characters from Poppleton’s class have been to beaches across the globe, with the high school travel club’s trips, to the Olympics in Vancouver and to NHL and Canadian curling events. There have been trips to the tops of grain elevators or even enjoying scenery and hidden away treasures right in our own province. One character, more than 10 years ago, met another flat character in an airport and had photos and a mini adventure together.
“Sometimes the whole class has got to experience some of the things that were sent as part of lots of projects. We all sampled Swiss chocolate one year when one flat self was in Switzerland,” Poppleton says.
“We were all given stickers from Australia when one person got to go to the land down under. Last year the class was given a set of Chinese kites that we flew in our school yard after someone’s grandma had taken her flat grandson to China.”
Poppleton says the children get excited when their flat selves travel somewhere or when their flat selves get to see or do something different.
“It is like they live vicariously through this one-dimensional character. I’ll hear the children say, ‘My flat self saw dolphins!’ ‘My flat self was in Paris.’ ‘My flat self got to go to a Saskatchewan Roughrider game!’”
Poppleton explains the theme of Grade 2 social studies is “Our Community” and one of the contexts in the Grade 2 language arts curriculum is social and cultural.
“We learn about what are the characteristics of our community and then, through this project, we can learn about other communities and compare what’s the same or different about our community and others.”
Poppleton first started this project in the fall of 2006 and has done it every year since. She said, “I don’t know how many students have referred to this project, but I know that there are quite a few students, or their parents, who have told me that they love the flat self project and that they still have their flat self and travel book. I know a couple people had the flat self keep travelling even after they left Grade 2.”
Poppleton says the best part about the flat character project is seeing how excited the children are to learn about the different places that the flat selves see. The worst thing is if the flat character doesn’t get the opportunity to travel. Or if they are travelling, and they get lost as that is always very upsetting.
“A couple of flat characters have had injuries but they have all been repairable.”
