Kailyn's Catch

Learning Intention:

I am learning to analyse text conveying emotion so that I can adapt these emotions visually.

Success Criteria:

• I can identify how a character is feeling using support from the text
• I can explain how specific facial expressions and body language show different emotions
• I can adapt a written text into illustrations, incorporating emotion from the original source

Essential knowledge:

For more information about point of view, watch The School Magazine’s video Point of Viewungroup.

Oral language and communication

If you have a digital subscription, complete the interactive activity Connecting Written and Illustrative Texts.

Write the following sentences on the board:

1. She lifted her face to the sunshine, inhaling deeply as the breeze caressed her hair.

Define any words the students don’t know. Then, without discussing the meaning of the sentence, ask students to sketch the scene. Encourage students to think about the expression of the person according to the language used in the sentence.

Once students have completed the task, have them hold up their sketches and scan the room to see how others have interpreted the sentence. Discuss similarities and differences in the drawings. Some students may have their character smiling, as the presence of sunshine, the deep breath and the word “caressed” suggests a feeling of contentment. Other students may have their character with tear tracks if they associate the actions in the sentence with someone who is experiencing a sad moment. Allow plenty of opportunities for students to explain their interpretations.

Understanding text:

Read aloud Kailyn’s Catch or listen to the audio recording if you have a digital subscription. Ask students whose point of view the text is told from (Kailyn’s) and how they know (the story gives us Kailyn’s thoughts and observations).

As a class, ask students to map Kailyn’s emotional journey through the story by using examples in the text to support their answers. For example:

Determined - She needed to catch her very first fish, or her older brother, Connor, would never stop teasing her about her bad luck.

Proud - Kailyn smiled. Grandma wasn’t big on putting worms on hooks. Instead, she’d taught Kailyn how to do it without poking herself.

Annoyed - Kailyn scowled at the grumpy-looking clouds drifting toward them.

Excited - Kailyn stood up and jigged around.

Sad/Empathetic - Kailyn knew it would be dead by the time they got it home. It wouldn’t be smiling then. It wouldn’t do anything ever again.

Disappointed - Kailyn sighed. Connor would never believe her now.

Grateful - Time spent with Grandma was the real catch.

Creating text:

Explain that students are to choose a short portion of the text and adapt it into a comic strip. Use an example comic strip to talk in more depth about how artists portray events and emotions using minimal written text. Hungry Bugs on page 36 of this issue of Countdown can be analysed for discussion points. For example, in the second panel, a written text might read “the old man stretched and climbed out of bed, ready to eat breakfast”. Ask students what the comic has done visually to convey this information. Sample answers:

- The old man is in his pjs, signalling it’s either bedtime or morning

- The old man is stretching his arms as if he’s just woken up

- The old man has his back to the viewer and is walking towards the door

- The old man has a speech bubble over his head, but the illustrator has creatively drawn a cereal bowl rather than write that the old man is thinking about breakfast

Ask students to write down a few ideas on how they might portray their chosen portion of Kailyn’s Catch as a comic strip. Remind them to look at language in the text to help identify Kailyn’s emotions, which in turn will guide their drawings. Discuss body language and facial expressions of different emotions – such as hunched shoulders and downward-turning face for sadness or insecurity, bright smile and hands in the air for happiness or eyebrows furrowed but smiling mouth to show determination.

Students share ideas with a partner, who gives constructive feedback and other suggestions.

Comic strip templates can be found on Canvaungroup, or students can draw their own.

Assessment for/as learning:

Students swap their comic strip with a partner for feedback. Partners should reread the original written text to compare to the adaption, then give feedback in the form of two stars and a wishungroup. Partners will be looking for:

- How accurately Kailyn’s emotions are interpreted in the comic

- How closely the events of the text match the comic