What do you think?

GOOD MORNING BRITAIN!Hi, I’m Graham, the producer of Good

Morning Britain. We’re interviewing Susan Boyle, the star of Britain’s Got

Talent. The angle is that she’s an unlikely pop star.

We need you to produce some some graphics to show how unusual she is.

I thought so too. I saw her on TV. I

wonder if she’ll get a top ten hit? She’s

not like most of our British pop singers.

I saw Susan Boyle on

YouTube. I didn’t expect her to

sound like that! Her voice was

great.

Who is Susan Boyle?

A 48-year-old Scottish lady, who was living quietly with her cats

only a short time ago. Now her voice has made her a star

across the world thanks to YouTube.

Unusual? What makes Susan Boyle an unusual star compared to these top UK female singers?

Bangor, Wales Islington, London London Islington, London

Duffy, born 1984

Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire Hammersmith, London Hammersmith, London Southgate, London

Alexandra Burke, born 1988 Kate Nash, born 1987 Leona Lewis, born 1985

Alesha Dixon, born 1978 Lily Allen, born 1985 Estelle, born 1980 Amy Winehouse

Up2d8 mathsTeacher’s guide Susan Boyle, the contestant on Britain’s Got Talent who is now famed for silencing Simon Cowell with her incredible performance of ‘I dreamed a Dream’ from Les Miserables, soared to fame after her performance, courtesy of YouTube. Her audition quickly went world wide and comments about her talent hit the newspapers and news broadcasts almost overnight.… continued on the next slide

These spreads give opportunities for placing numbers on number lines and the associated calculation work, data handling and finding the average, mode and range of a set of data as well as developing research skills using the internet.You could also use these as a stimulus for planning a talent show in school or within your class! Many of the following activities can be adapted for the Foundation Stage as well as Key Stage 1.

1st spread: Good Morning Britain! Before beginning the activities on the spread, set the scene by showing the children Susan’s audition. Click here for the link on YouTube. As some authorities won’t allow access to YouTube, it might be worth downloading this at home.

● Lead a discussion based on the initial reactions of the audience and the judges, why do the children think they were laughing at her at the beginning? Why did their reactions change so that she had everyone standing and cheering by the end? Focus on Piers’ comment ‘without a doubt that was the biggest surprise I have had in three years on the show’ and Amanda’s comment ‘I honestly think we were all being very cynical and that was the biggest wake up call ever’. Why do the children

think they said these things?

● Focus on the comments on the spread and discuss why Susan is not the most usual of singers to become a star e.g. she is much older than most up and coming stars such as those in the charts today and winners of shows like The X Factor, neither is she the most glamorous.

● Draw a timeline on the board with Susan’s year of birth at one end, current year at the other and ask the children to place other dates onto it e.g. the year of their birth, year of their parent’s/siblings birth, year they started school and other famous historical events over Susan Boyle’s life so far e.g. 1966 England wins world cup, 1969

Concorde, first supersonic airliner, makes its maiden voyage, 1997 Tony Blair becomes prime minister, 2000 new millennium. Find differences between the various events reinforcing subtraction by counting on as you do this.

● You could ask the children to research this themselves using, for example, the BBC UK historical time line

● Encourage the children to take on the role of a researcher for the producer of Good Morning Britain, the show that Susan is to appear on. They should research her on the internet to find as many facts about her as they can that show she is an unusual success. They should produce a graphic summary of their findings.

2nd spread: Unusual?● Draw a timeline from 1961 to the present year and add the birth years of these top UK

female singers. Work out the differences in their ages compared to Susan Boyle’s. Find the range of ages, the mode and the average age of a ‘usual’ new singing star.

● For a more challenging activity ask the children to find out their actual birthdays on the internet and find more precise differences in age involving months and days.

● Give the children the opportunity to research these singers so that they can compare them with the details they found about Susan. They could make up fact files abouteach one. These could include family details, interests, what they did before they became famous, how they were discovered and so on. Wikipedia is a good resource to use for this.

● Make a tally of the children’s favourites from the selection on the spread and ask them to make a bar graph to show the results of the tally.

● You could ask them to sort the singing stars, using the information that they found, into Carroll or Venn diagrams according to their own criteria e.g. number one single/no number one single, awards/no awards, born in London/not born in London, trained singer/not trained singer.

● You could locate the towns or cities where they were born finding them on a map using coordinates. Discover who lived in the most remote place. This could lead to a discussion on whether, if Susan lived in a city such as London, she might have had more chance of being discovered years ago.