Teaching Resources for Dogstar

These free lesson plans and classroom worksheets provide ideas for teaching Genre, advertising, humour and satire, stereotypes, living things, sustainability, ecology, animals, responsibility for the natural environment and the Earth's future, robots, design and have particular relevance to English, Arts (film media studies, visual arts, drama), science, environment, and technology.

Aims:
This sequence of learning experiences aims to introduce the Dogstar series and its central characters; the concept of genre, in particular, news reports, science fiction, TV advertisements and TV comedy along with the related Dogstar website.
For older students it is suggested that teachers contextualise activities by suggesting to students that they are to conduct a focused evaluation and review of a series made for young children. This will involve students completing activities in order to consider whether the genre, storyline, characters and messages are appropriate and engaging for young children. Students might also design surveys in order to elicit responses from younger students.
Teaching and Learning framework:
The activities are organised into sections with two main components:

• the ‘discussing’ component: students engage in individual and group talk to come to understandings about the issues and characters and to explore the significance of those understandings (for example, for their own lives).
• the ‘doing’ component: students explore their understandings and explorations in order to do something – for example, perform or tell a story, create a product, transform some aspect of the series.

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