Old Monster Dog:FOUNDATION-English-Elaborate2

Little J is initially scared to approach the ‘monster’ in the back yard. Encouraged to face his fears, he vows to catch the frilly-necked monster and sets about building a monster trap with the help of Levi.

Elaborate - Create short texts to explore, record and report ideas and events using familiar words and beginning writing knowledge

Theme - CHARACTER

As a class, view the clip:

  • Teacher Eater, 'Lift Off’, ACTF (Scootle: TLF ID R7813)

This short animated film shows a storybook-style animation for young children about a boy, Bron, who loves dragons. One day he befriends a lost dragon called Louie, who follows him to school. Bron's father refuses to allow Bron to keep Louie, and Louie is about to be removed by the dragon catcher when a huge 'teacher eater' dragon appears and threatens all of the teachers. Louie saves the teachers by turning the teacher eater to stone. He becomes a hero and ends up living at Bron's house and acting as the school's protector.

Ask students to identify the ‘hero’ and the ‘villain’ and to describe the characteristics of each identified character. Introduce the idea that both characters are ‘dragons’. Have students vote on whether they believe the accepted view of a dragon is usually ‘nice’ or ‘naughty’?

Have students to nominate their favourite dragon characters or stories, and state which category they think the dragon is in: ‘nice’ or ‘naughty’? Determine where the students have encountered their dragon stories, e.g. book, video, game.

Ask students to explain the actions the characters perform in their stories that make people label them as ‘nice’ or ‘naughty’.

Then, explore ideas about a character that are opposite to the original story. For example, if Shrek was mean, how would the story change? Who determines whether the character is naughty or nice? Writer or audience?

Ask students to imagine that their story was reported by a news outlet. Provide some story starters for students to use as springboards for telling their ‘side of the story’. They can change or twist a well-known fairy tale, change the ending of a story, or swap how characters react to the dilemmas of the story.

Suggested resources