Moods, feelings and colours
In order to continue working, students are encouraged to consider the moods or feelings they associate with different colours when they create art. For example: Gray, brown, pale blue: create atmospheres that are quiet, peaceful, sad or mysterious Red, yellow, orange: create atmospheres that are exciting, fun or suspenseful. Then, the class can be divided into groups of four or five and given each a length of mural paper. The paper is divided in half, titling one side “The Littlest Knight” and the other side “The Time Travellers”. Students are encouraged to paint a
scene from each story, primarily using colours that evoke each story’s atmosphere. It is important to make sure students can relate that atmosphere is part of “setting the stage” for a story, along with location and time. C) Main characters: Students are encouraged to consider how the story character relates to the setting they developed (if the setting affected them in some way) and asked to write some sentences on the main characters. D) Dialogue: Dialogue is essential in developing a character’s personality; through words characters show their feelings, thoughts or their goals. To get students thinking about dialogue, they may be encouraged to role-play an exchange of dialogue between two story characters, from different stories, for example, the princess of The Littlest Knight and Ramses of The Time Travellers. Both characters have fear; the princess’s fears when the dragon attacks is a secret to the rest of the family while Ramses feels afraid when he is on the point of being attacked by a fish.
Students should work in pairs preparing their dialogues which may be read and shared with another pair. This activity provides a good opportunity to show students how to elicit positive responses from the rest of the class, for example they can ask their partners: What part of my story did you like best? Why?