SHOCKED pupils arrived at school to find a spaceship had crash-landed in their playground.

Youngsters at Wyke Regis Junior School in Weymouth spotted debris from where the alien craft had touched down and blasted off again – including burn marks and slimy green footprints.

Police sealed off the scene while a government scientist took readings and probed the evidence.

And the whole school of 370 pupils aged seven to 11 then spent the day writing news stories, magazine features and information leaflets about the X-Files-style mystery.

But the drama was all part of a ploy by staff to spark the pupils’ literary skills – and hammer home the importance of writing for everyone.

Head Carl Saunders said: “We have been focusing on the development of the children’s writing for the past few years and have come a long way.

“With this we wanted to try something a bit more creative and imaginative.”

Mr Saunders added that a member of staff came up with the idea for the scenario to involve the children in writing about something exciting.

Staff set up the burn marks, green slime and touchdown points on the school playground before pupils arrived for school in the morning.

They arranged for PC Alan Iveson to arrive in a police car with flashing lights to ‘investigate’ and cordon off the scene, to add authenticity to the exercise.

Dr Brian Bickerstaffe, a parent of one of the members of staff, played the role of the government scientist or ‘mad professor’ at the scene and an Echo reporter also covered the sighting.

Staff suspended the curriculum for the day while pupils investigated the incident before revealing that the UFO mystery had been set up by them all along and explained how it had been done.

The idea of the exercise was to emphasise in an exciting way that ‘everybody writes’ in everyday life – including the policeman, scientist, Echo reporter and themselves – and that writing was for a purpose.

Teacher Vivien Sloan came up with idea for the day and staff formed a working team to get it off the ground.

Teacher and literary subject leader Esther Derrien said that the school suspended the curriculum and devoted the whole day to focus on writing.

Staff showed pupils mocked-up pictures of spacecraft to use in their reports and teacher Dave Payne created a BBC-style radio broadcast about the spaceship.

Parents were also invited to write down their comments.

Pupils Kieran Westlake, nine, and Oliver Short, 10, were among the youngsters who saw the landing site on their arrival at school.

Oliver said that the green footprints had to be alien as they only had three toes and Kieran added that the landing site was weird.

Mr Saunders added that they were thankful for the co-operation of the police and Dr Bickerstaffe.