Ghosts and time travel by the light of the moon: A look at Helen Cresswell's Moondial through drama

Helen Day
Friday, May 1, 2020

Helen Cresswell’s Moondial has become something of a children’s classic, having been released both as a book and a TV drama in the 1980s. It is remarkable in that it is at once a book about time travelling and it is a ghost story. It also touches on history, has a magnificently grand setting, whilst covering themes that are just as relevant to young people today as they ever were: friendship and loyalty, bullying, and the loss/potential loss of a close relative. This scheme of work is built around four of the central characters, and uses a range of drama exercises and games to explore, and think beyond, the text. It broadly covers the drama objectives set out in the KS2 National Curriculum, with additional links to PSHE, to the wider area of spoken language and to the English National Curriculum on the whole.