This document discusses how to teach students about character development through text and images. It will use two picture books, Our Cat Flossie and Call Me Gorgeous, which both focus on developing a single character. Students will analyze how each page provides new textual or visual information about the character. They will complete a KWHL chart and discussions to demonstrate their understanding. Students will then create their own interactive character using Excel and PowerPoint by selecting images and text to develop their character.

1. With Our Cat Flossie and
Call Me Gorgeous!

2.  What?
We will be looking at character development:
How text is used to describe a character and
how images are used to show a characters’
appearance.
 Why?
So we can ‘…create a text using writing and
images to express and develop experiences,
events, information, ideas and characters.’
(ACARA year 3 achievement standard)

3.  How?
 Language
Exploring action/saying and sensing verbs in narrative
texts to show how they give information about what
characters do and say and allow readers to know what a
character thinks and feels. (acela1482)
 Literature
Drawing on literary texts read, viewed and listened to
for inspiration and ideas, appropriating language to
create mood and characterisation. (aclet1601)
 Literacy
Use software including word processing programs with
growing speed efficiency to construct and edit texts
featuring visual, print and audio elements. (acely 1685)

4. The Year 3 Students will have prior knowledge from
Year 2 where they were required to know and
understand that;
 Language for interaction – evaluative language: how
language is used to express opinions, and make
evaluative judgements about people, places, things
and texts.
 Expressing and developing ideas – visual language:
how images work in texts to communicate meanings
especially in conjunction with other elements such as
print and sound – identify visual representations of
characters’ actions, reactions, speech and thought
processes in narratives, and consider how these
images add to or contradict or multiply the meaning
of accompanying words.
(ACARA, scope and sequence, Year 2)

5.  Our Cat Flossie
This text is can be used to explicitly teach the
concept of character develop through the use
of text.
The reason for this is that
the text is focused on only
a single character
Flossie the cat.

6.  Each page contains only a single new piece
of textual information about Flossie the cat.
 Eachpage has a single image that
corresponds to the textual information.

7.  Call Me Gorgeous!
This text also can be used to explicitly teach
the concept of character develop through the
use of images.
Again this text is
focused on only a single
character of an
unknown type.

8. Each page contains only a single new piece of
textual and imagery information about an
unknown creature.

9.  Both of these texts allows Learners to focus on
the idea of learning about only the main
character of the text and how that character is
developed without being distracted by other
images or textual information.
(ACARA links - acela1482 & aclet1601)

10.  KWHL chart can be made for the students to
reference their understanding and learning of
this topic before and then after the topic has
been completed. (Eric Frangenheim, 2005, p61)
 The picture books Our Cat Flossie by Ruth Brown
and Call Me Gorgeous! By Giles and Alexandra
Milton can be introduced and read to students.
 Have the Learners compare the final image in
the book to their mental imagery of the
creature. Look at the impact of character
development in imagery. Discussions on the
differences will utilise Bloom’s Taxonomy of
hierarchal thinking.

11.  Questioning of the Learners – ‘effective
questioning is a key teaching strategy, aimed at
finding out what students know and prompting
them to think through ideas, combine pieces of
information and explore ideas.’ (Gordon
Winch, 2011, p58)
 The Learners through class discussions can look
at how both text and images can be used
individually/together to help a reader to learn
about and understand a character in a text.
Personality and appearance will have to be
explored and considered. This relates to DoL
2, declarative knowledge, no. 6 - create
opportunities for students to discover or figure
out information for themselves. (Marzano &
Pickering, 1997, p56)

12.  Interactive Excel Book
 Using the continuum teaching method – I, We,
You - the students will be guided through each
page and the processes they will use to
manipulate the information there to suit their
choices. The interactive excel book allows the
Students to experience an Office document
maker in way it is not usually used. This activity
requires them to interpret text and decide on an
image to go with it.

13.  Interactive Multimodal Power Point
 Using
the continuum teaching method – I,
We, You - the Learners will be guided
through the use of Power Point to make a
book.
 Thisactivity focuses on pieces of images
similar to Call Me Gorgeous and will allow
the Students to start compiling ideas about
their own character they are to develop.

14.  Using excel and PowerPoint to engage the Learners is
an effective way to ‘develop a clearer understanding
and awareness of the basic structure of written and
visual texts.’
 ‘provides a high quality of presentation that can
motivate students who find manual writing difficult
or messy.’
 and ‘students can learn in a more holistic,
multimodal way when text is accompanied by audio
and visual content.’
(Gordon Winch, 2011, p400 - 406)
(ACARA link - acely 1685)

15.  Use Power Point in a new way!!
 Download Mischief Mouse – IT’S FREE
 Make a slide show that is interactive.
 Engage students.
 Make a hands on text interactive.