The Way we Were
Round the Twist |
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Lesson plan: Skills and processes fostered through the activities include:
1. Tuning in 1.1 When I was a baby Ask your students (and other teachers) to bring in photos of themselves from babyhood to their current age. Each student sequences the photos in a timeline – writing captions to indicate some of the key aspects of each stage of their lives. Ask students to share their timelines with others. Discuss. How do you feel when you look back on earlier times? 1.2 Blast from the past Ask students (and other teachers) to bring an item to school, such as an old toy, that they regard as from their past. This might be an item connected to their childhood or it might be an item that is linked to previous generations of their family – or you may ask students to find something from both categories. Share an item of your own with students will help generate interest in this activity. Organise students into sharing circles where they present their object to others and explain its significance. Some key questions that might assist this process include: What
is the object?
Using their item from the past or one of the photos from the timeline, ask students to write a descriptive ‘memory scene’ from their past. Students can read these aloud to the class. 1.4 View the episode Toy
Love 2.1 Key scene Ask students to think back over the episode of Toy Love. If they had to choose one ‘still’ to accompany a poster or advertisement for the episode – what image would they choose and why? 2.2 Capture the essence Following on from 2.1, ask students to imagine they have the task of writing an advertisement for this episode to persuade people to watch it. What would they write? What photo or drawing would accompany the text? Students can work in pairs to develop a ‘flier’ for the episode that might appear in a TV magazine or newspaper. 2.3 Past and future In the early scenes of this episode, various comments are made about
'getting rid of the past'. Remind students of this exchange and ask them how they feel about what’s being said. Why do Tony and his family think it is a good thing to say ‘goodbye to the past?’ Have you ever felt like that? Can we really ‘get rid of the past’? Ask: why do you think the scriptwriter wrote this scene? What point is being made? 2.4 Just like Linda Ask students: in what ways are you like/unlike Linda? Do you identify with her in this episode? In what ways? Are there any moments when she reminds you of yourself? 2.5 Under pressure Re-visit the scene where Linda is teased for having her ‘dolly’. Scene: The classroom. Ask students: what is happening to Linda here? Why are the others teasing her? Discuss this as a form of bullying. What is Linda’s response? Students can take a moment from that scene and draw it, using speech bubbles to add dialogue and ‘thought bubbles’ to add the inner thoughts and feelings of each character. NB: There are several scenes throughout the series where bullying is depicted. Gribbs, Tiger and Rabbit are consummate bullies – but usually end up getting more than they give! Depending on your students’ familiarity with the episodes, they can list some of the scenes they recall as showing examples of bullying. Some suggestions: Mali-boo ep 7:
Gribbs, Rabbit and Tiger tie Pete up to stop him from entering the race
and put super glue on the pier. As a class, develop some guidelines for dealing with bullies. This may be a simple list of strategies agreed to by the class. It is important to develop these with students rather than for them. The guidelines can be developed under headings such as: What
is bullying and what does it look/feel like?
Ask your students to survey members of the school community to find out if their interests and activities have changed as they have grown older. Decide on specific age groups, Eg. 0 - 5, 5 - 10, 10 - 15, 15 - 20 and so on and ask respondents to indicate how they spent their leisure time at these ages. Students can then pool their data and find a way to visually represent the results. Ask: are there patterns across the data? What does it say about the way humans grow and change? Are there things people tend to ‘hold onto’ for life? 3. Making connections These activities draw the threads of the mini unit together; assess the degree to which students’ ideas have developed; and provide direction for possible further investigations. 3.1 Analogies Explore some analogies for the concept of growing up. For example: How
is growing up like running a race?
Ask students to brainstorm a list of sayings or common phrases around the theme of time change. Some examples are provided below. Students can work firstly in small groups to write an explanation of the meaning of the phrase, and then secondly, come up with an illustration or piece of writing with one of the phrases as its central message. The
more things change, the more they stay the same
At one stage in the episode, Tony declares that ‘Linda
is paranoid about losing her childhood’. Ask students to nominate
ten top things they most love about ‘being a kid’. Share these
and then work together to discuss which things can be taken into adulthood
and which things might be ‘left behind’. Use visual arts to
depict some of the changes that take place when we become adults. These activities provide extension and enrichment ideas for individuals, groups or the whole class. The selection of activities will depend on both the time available, the needs of students and the direction in which the unit has already gone. 4.1 One man’s junk... Revisit the scene where the various family members come out of the house with piles of rubbish: Scene: Outside lighthouse. Ask students: what can we do with things we have grown out of or have no further use for? Revise the concepts of reusing and recycling. Organise a ‘trash and treasure’ stall at school; collect household items to give to charity, arrange a ‘swap meet’ using old toys and games. 4.2 In my day Discuss with students what they already know about materials used before the days of disposable items. Ask: what are some of the things we often throw away when we have finished with them? Make a list (Eg. cartons; disposable nappies; pens; tissues; plastic bags.) What might our grandparents and great grandparents have used when they were children? Encourage students to talk with elderly relatives about the treatment of waste in their childhood – what was thrown out and what was used again and again? How was food packaged, bought and carried home? Students can record their stories and recollections on tape and play to the class throughout the unit. Encourage students to design a procedure for gathering data about waste in and around their homes. These audits can focus primarily on the composition and amount of household garbage disposed of over a week, with the activity conducted as a homework task. At the end of the week, each student visually represents the data they have gathered. Eg. using graphs. If appropriate, students can record their data using fractions or percentages. Compare individual results. Combine the results and calculate an average. Ask students: What
were the most common materials in your household garbage? Why? 5. Getting technical These activities focus on the structure of the text itself to give students insight into some of the techniques used in the construction of visual texts and to develop critical viewing skills 5.1 Look what’s talking! The technique of animating objects is widely used in film and television – particularly in children’s television. In this episode, Veronique is given a voice and there is the suggestion of movement – although we do not actually see her move. Compare the technique used here, with the same idea in If the Walls Could Talk (ep 12). The device has a very different effect on the way we view the objects. How is this achieved? Brainstorm other film and television texts (even advertisements) which use a similar device (most students will know of the Toy Story films for example). Discuss the techniques that may have been used to create these effects. Ask students to find out about how computers are now used to create special effects and detailed animation in film and television. 5.2 Black comedy Toy Love draws on the audience’s knowledge of devices commonly used in ‘horror’ films. Camera angles, unexplained events, the suggestion of a ‘presence’ in a room through rearranged furniture, a turning door handle, the build up of tension through the use of music, close ups, etc. Linda’s (uncharacteristically) aggressive dialogue also adds black humour to the script. Our familiarity with these devices, the exaggeration of them and the context in which they are used means that the result is comic rather than frightening. Divide the students into small groups and ask them to review the episode. Give each group one of the following aspects to focus on and then report on to the class:
Callow, J. (ed.) (1999) Image matters: visual
texts in the classroom, PETA NSW.
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