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Our Term 4 Adventure!


If you have been following along with my specific posts related to Number Agents, you will already know I like to have some sort of big adventure each term.  These adventures usually involve all of the villains and some sort of kidnap scenario.  Lots of drama comes into play and we love it!  In fact the children constantly reflect on these scenarios and they form a strong emotional connection...good news for maths as it is the hero of the story! Not to forget as well that I love it...the teaching of maths is so exciting this way!
With any normal Mantle there would be a wrapping up, it is important to have closure to the process.  I have been giving a lot of thought to this and how I can make it more exciting for the agents this year.  Last year I think the storyline was just that the villains had gone on holiday.  Many agents return to our class, so it is important that it isn’t so tightly closed that I cannot restart it again.  
As I am also very aware (as you probably are too) Term 4 is hectic, I plan to wrap agency up by week 7 so that we have time for all the other bits and pieces end of term has to offer.  Obviously another consideration for me is that I do not teach in the last couple of weeks as Principal duties firmly take over at that time of year.
This is the part of Agency I absolutely love, the opportunity to link in with my inner child and create fantastic scenarios for my agents to be part of.  I lead the play in this obviously, but they quickly start to take the lead and eagerly go off in their own direction during their self-directed play.
Right, so I have seven weeks (for me that is three days teaching a week) to bring agency to a wonderful, creative, imaginative conclusion.
I have been mulling over what I will do over this last couple of weeks and think I finally have a brilliant storyline that will work.  I came with this one while driving in the car today :)
So here goes, my thoughts on the storyline so far (of course it may change a little.)
1) Agency will run as normal, this adventure will run alongside normal day to day agency.

2) Head agent will contact us, initially to say that the villains have moved their hiding place and then to ask for our help in finding it.  We are to be the intelligence.  We will also receive a message from Head Villain, threatening some major villain action on December 1st (that gives us a deadline….we will use a map to track the days from this point.)

3) Head agent has a team of agents out on reconnaissance.  They are monitoring air waves and have heard head villains voice speaking in what appears to be code.

4) These codes will be given to us to solve, they will come in once or twice a week and will be separate from our main problem.  They will be a range of different problems.  We need to work out the answer, this will then link to a coordinate on a map that our agents on recon have currently been searching.  We will have the map, will use the number to work out coordinate and feed this info back to the recon team.  They will then check this area.

5) Many of the clues/coordinates will come up short, but as we get closer to the end the coordinates will uncover a new villain, the recon team will take this villain out of play. We will then turn the photo of this villain over on our map as they will no longer be in play.

6) The last villain to be found will be head villain. We will of course find him just before his deadline of 1st of December.


7) Head agent will imprison the villains with the hope that they will not bother our clients again….of course, head villain will promise escape.

8) We will close agency by reflecting on how far we have come, looking through the 'book' of our achievements, looking at the photos of us and remembering our favourite moments and then taking a 'key' from our pocket, closing the agency door and locking it...for some that return the door will open again next year, for others moving on, they will move onto new teams in 2018 and will fall into a new mantle easily.


Can't wait to get started on our adventure!

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