Retell the story in the form of a playscript, adding speech and stage directions where appropriate.

I also continued to write “grown-up” songs and perform them in folk clubs and on the radio, and have recently released two CDs of these songs. Former Children's Laureate Julia Donaldson is basically the goddess of wordsmithery, as far as I can tell. She's most famous for creating The Gruffalo with Axel Scheffler but has also written about a billion Oxford Learning Tree early readers and a number of lovely books with illustrator Lydia Monks.This book allowed me to relate to their own experiences of arguing with friends, going their own separate ways, feeling sad and lonely and then making friends. It allowed me to really highlight the importance of sharing and being nice together which all the pupils got this message at the end. Sharing a Shell is a charming underwater tale of friendship and fun from the stellar picture book partnership of Julia Donaldson and Lydia Monks, creators of What the Ladybird Heard. With brilliant rhythmic verse, bright and distinctive illustrations, this is a firm favourite with children and parents alike.

The book explores friendships and relationships, of how the characters can co-operate with each other to make a lovely place to live even though they are not the same species. This can be expanded upon to explore the different communities children live in and how/if they work to make a nice environment to live in. Sharing a Shell also highlights the importance of each character, as without each other they are lonely and the shell will be dirty, at risk and unable to move around. Children can then expand on this to see what jobs there are within the UK and the World over and how they assist the people who live there. This is a great book that shows the ups and downs friendships can have but still shows that there's always a way to work through problems. With sharing being difficult for children it is lovely how we get to see the crab facing the consequences of his decisions not to share and the children got to think about what they thought was the right thing for crab to do. Poor crab has lost his shell, and nobody wants to share. But when he finally finds a shell of his own, he is surprised to find himself being asked to move over! A story about sharing and friendship, this board book is both touching and amusing. I struggled with the word "anemone" a tongue twister for me but he was called the purple blob so made life easier for me.

Keep up to date with your professional development

Look at the use of punctuation in the story. When have full stops, commas, questions marks, exclamation marks (etc.) been used and why? You know you’re in for a treat when a book has a glittery front cover and ‘Sharing A Shell’ by Julia Donaldson doesn’t disappoint. With the lyrical and rhythmic verse we come to expect from her popular picture books, she tells a tale of friendship and collaboration. After finding a shell and teaming up with an anemone and a bristleworm, crab learns that when faced with the challenges a stormy sea throws at him he is better off with his new friends than on his own. The illustrations are bright and eye catching for the children and they loved the glittery look and feel to the pictures. It was nice to have a story based underwater for a change and good for them to learn about what crabs two friends are as not all of the children had seen that type from creature before. Sharing a Shell is a lovely story about a hermit crab who when he finds a nice new shell decides he doesn't want to share it with his friends but soon discovers it is a lot easier when you're friends are there to help you. With her 2004 picture book Sharing a Shell British children's author Julia Donaldson has a hermit crab busily searching on the beach and in tidal pools for a new home as his/her older abode is no longer big enough. And upon finding a new and suitably spacious shell in which to live, a sea anemone comes along and asks to share the hermit crab's new place of residence with the promise to protect the crab (and of course also the shell) from predators, and then a passing bristleworm also asks, offering to keep the shell clean ad tidy in return (and with the crab quite readily agreeing to basically having two permanent roommates). But after a period of time a bigger shell is once again needed, and while at first the hermit carb, sea anemone and bristleworm squabble amongst themselves and end up going their separate ways, at the end of Sharing a Shell, the bristleworm finds a new and larger shell, and crab, sea anemone and bristleworm once again move in together.