Little J feels lucky when he wears a new pair of yellow undies. After Old Dog destroys them, he loses his confidence. Big Cuz saves the day with the remnants of the undies made into a sweat band, and Little J finds confidence to play the basketball game and win the day.

Engage - Explore different ways of expressing emotions, including verbal, visual, body language and facial expressions

Theme - CHARACTER

After viewing Little J & Big Cuz, episode 1, ‘Lucky Undies’, engage students with the following activities to support their understanding of Little J’s sense of luck and superstition.

As a class, sing the song: If You’re Happy and You Know it, Clap your Hands 

Introduce students to the concept of ‘emotions’ by naming what they are, describing how they feel, and explaining what they look like to others.

Draw examples of simple faces on the IWB or board to extrapolate the expressions of a variety of emotions. Invite students to nominate other expressions and draw them themselves. This resource on emotion in art may be useful: Expressing Emotions through Art Lesson 1—Everyone Shows They Care.

Play different songs from different cultures and times, and invite students to guess what emotion is being expressed, or publish a Kahoot poll to analyse the class responses. Discuss the differences in opinion and why these differences occurred, such as cultural, familiarity / lack of familiarity, etc.

As a class, re-watch Episode 1 ‘Lucky Undies’, and ask students to concentrate on the different emotions expressed in the episode. Create a table with all the names of the characters who feature in the episode. Use the Little J & Big Cuz Production Press Kit to find the names of the characters in the series. When the students see a character expressing an emotion, they should draw an appropriate expressive face under the name, e.g. smiley face for happy.

Invite students to pose questions about in what ways can the audience read emotion in the animation, e.g. sound, lighting, colour, etc. Suggest that these are symbols and cues for the audience to read the intention of the story.

Discuss with students the design of ‘emojis’ that are common today. View the suite of emojis available on a mobile device. Have students write a sentence, email or text containing an expression, and have them design an emoji that they would end the sentence to heighten the sense of expression to the reader. Have students design a text communication about how they feel using only emojis. Suggested resources:

• Get emoji
• Apple emoji list