Your Unique Alien

You'll need white paper, coloured card and felt tips. You might also like to add some googly eyes into the mix as these always go down well. 

Ask the children to fold a piece of white paper in half and write their names in very large letters along the fold. Keeping the paper folded, they should cut out the shape those letters broadly make and then unfold it to reveal their alien's odd outline. Next they stick the shape onto a coloured card background, add in the detail with felt pens, and start to think about how their alien operates. These are useful questions to ponder:

 What does your alien eat?

What does it fear?

What planet did it come from? How did it arrive?

What are its special body features?

What does it think of YOU?

After the pupils have annotated their alien pictures with this biographical detail - plus any other information they want to add - they can write a story about how they first encountered their alien and what happened next.

(Many thanks to Amanda Smyth of West Midlands Writers who kindly said I could share her idea.)