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.

Explore - Compare opinions about characters, events and settings

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, develop a ‘Relationship chart’ (Mindmap) for the Little J & Big Cuz characters. Use a concept map for students to understand these relationships, placing Little J in the centre. Additional source:

• Graphic organisers

Develop a class list of human qualities and behaviours including both positive and negative qualities, e.g. friendly, sunny, curious, self-confident, shy, and naughty.

Making it personal

Invite students to list words to describe themselves and other students.

1. Ask students to work in a pair.
   • On one post-it-note, each student writes five words that best describe themselves.
   • On a second post-it-note, they write five words that describe their paired partner.
   • Fold the descriptions so that the students don’t see what is written.

2. Each pair finds another pair.
   • On a third post-it-note, each person writes five more words about each of the students in the other pair—ten words altogether.
   • So there are now three post-it-notes with ten words to describe each person in the class.

3. The group of four swap their post-it-notes with another group.
   • Each group opens the three post-it-notes for each person and try to guess which person belongs to which descriptions.

Discuss the occurrence of similar words used for each person.
If a descriptive word is written by all three people, it becomes a ‘universal’ description, that is, it is a word or understanding that most people may hold about that person.
Any words that appear twice can be titled as a ‘commonly-held’ description.
If the word only appears once, it can be termed a ‘rarely-held’ description.

Explain that in film and television, producers want to develop characters that appeal to a universal audience. The characters must display accepted behaviours if they are to be liked by all, and unacceptable behaviours if they are to be identified as ‘bad’. Have students suggest characters from other animated programs and story books that use stereotypical behaviours to show the character as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Explore some symbolism associated with universal Good-Bad characters. Examine the Little J & Big Cuz Series Press Kit and read the character outlines.

Invite students to select their favourite character to create a FaceBook-style (or other social media) profile for their character. The students can draw the character and write a short profile. In the profile, they should use words considered ‘universal’ and ‘commonly-held’.