Hooking them in

Our next Mantle is based around Weeds. To hook the class in to being weed research scientists, I had  a lot of different weeds spread out all over the tables, with Latin and English named cards scattered all over the floor.
When the children came in after lunch I was in role as a a very upset junior assistant who had been delivering the sorted weeds and cards to the pressing room, for a team of weed research scientists. I had tripped and everything had gone everywhere ( weeds conveniently fell on the tables, LOL). I begged the children to help me. They said they would. I asked them how they could do it. Did they know Latin? They assured me that they knew some of the weeds and that they could use the Internet. A discussion followed on how they would  use the Internet.
As they started sorted the weeds and matching the cards, I changed roles to become the person who knew all the names, and when they put cards down by a weed, I would check them. If it was right it stayed by the weed, if wrong I removed it, for them to try again. I had also added a made up weed name with a fake Latin name to create a bit of confusion.
It was interesting to observe the children. Most were totally focused on the task in pairs, whereas a couple of them just walked around and around the tables and needed more guidance before they joined in.
At the end when we had sorted the weeds and cards we talked about what we had been doing and realised that we had actually stepped into the role of a weed research scientists. I asked the children if they wanted to find out more about these scientists and maybe we could become them. HOOKED!!!!