Opening Scenes

Genie From Down Under
Level: Year 3 to Year 8
KLA outcomes:

English; The Arts
Theme: Narrative Structure; Film Language
Description:
This lesson introduces students to the different styles authors adopt when writing for television then writing the same story for print media.

Resources:

Video: I do. You do! Who do? ep1 vol. 4 The Genie From Down Under 2, ACTF 

See Education Catalogue for video purchasing details and order form.

Book: The Genie From Down Under 2, Amanda Midlam, (1998) Angus&Robertson, Australia. This book is available from good bookshops throughout Australia. 

 Lesson plan:

1. Introduce the unit
Explain to students that an analysis of opening scenes between the original television version and the re-telling in the book is usually a good place to start comparing differences between the way information is presented in the TV program and in the book. 

Explain to students that when beginning a new series important information needs to be passed onto the viewer/reader to quickly establish the characters and the context. 
 

2. View the TV version
Screen the opening scene several times for students and discuss the characters, the story so far and any other information students observed. Cue in the scene

Begins with: Exterior of Townes Downes. Penelope is under a tree. 

Ends as: Diana says, 'I wish you'd just leave the sunscreen to Bruce'. Bruce smiles and swats. Penelope fumes and gives the sunscreen to Bruce. 

Dur: 3'55" 
3. Students write responses
Students can make a list of the most significant pieces of information about the story, characters and the location which are communicated to the audience in this scene, and how this information is communicated to the audience - for example, by the setting, the costumes, body language, dialogue, and sound effects. 

4. Read the book version
Read aloud or ask students to read the first two and a half pages of the tie-in book to see an interesting contrast in the way the information is presented between the two versions of the story. 

For example in the TV episode, the setting is clearly established as Australian with gum trees, birds warbling, the brown grass, the sunlight and the Australian farmhouse in the background. Yet in the book the setting is not described at all and the reader does not get any clues to this until almost the end of the second page where Penelope says: 'Mummy, you must protect yourself from this savage, brutal, cunning Australian...' Penelope gave Bruce a filthy look, '...sun' she finished. 

5. Class discussion
Discuss with students the similarities and differences between the TV program and the book. 

Students can look at the different ways the background information is presented to the viewer and to the reader. 

  • What does the reader find out about what has happened before? 
  • What does the television viewer find out? 
  • What is the same? 
  • What is different? 

This information could be collated on a venn diagram with the common information recorded in the middle. 

venn diagram

This involves drawing two interlocking circles and putting the features common to both texts in the shared middle space and the different features in the individual spaces for each text. 
 

6. Analyse the differences
Students can discuss and analyse the collated information, looking at what information is different or missing between the two versions.  They could make up a list of reasons why they think these changes were made in the book version and whether they make any significant differences to the story.

The ways of presenting the introductory and background information may be different but the story is essentially the same. In the TV version, Penelope speaks over images from the previous series to give a very quick overview of the back story whereas the book summarises the story in a few descriptive sentences. 
Students might consider questions such as: 
  • Do you think this makes a difference to the way the story unfolds? 
  • How do you relate to the characters? 
  • Which version do you prefer? 
  • Why? 
Venn diagram based on activity developed by Jane O'Loughlin with her year 8 class in Travers, D and Hancock, J (eds) (1994) Teaching Viewing - Twelve Units of Learning with Visual Texts, South Australian English Teachers Association.)

 

Related lesson plans

From TV to book, years 5-8
Translating comedy from screen to text, years 4-8

 

Author: Annemaree O'Brien