Lesson video

Hi there, my name is Mr. Byrne-Smith.

And in today's lesson we're going to be doing some readings together.

Now this is the second of five lessons on "A Christmas Carol", if you haven't yet watched lesson number one, please go back and watch it first.

In today's lesson, we're going to be analysing a character.

So let's make a start.

Here's the agenda for today's lesson.

First, we're going to have a quick recap of what we've learned so far.

Then we're going to do a text analysis before finally summarising today's lesson.

In this lesson, you will need an exercise book or paper, a pencil, and of course your brain.

So if you need to go off and get any of these things pause the video now.

Let's recap what we've learned so far.

Here we have the facts that we discussed last lesson, all about Charles Dickens.

As you'll notice I've removed some of the information and I need your help filling it back in.

So, born 1812 in, where? Lived during the something era.

Wrote many famous novels, including "Oliver Twist".

Often represented the struggles of the what? Pause the video and have a think.

Okay, so he was born in 1812 in England.

He lived during the Victorian era, wrote many famous novels "Oliver Twist" being an example.

He often represented the struggles of the poor.

Let's try with the text itself which is "A Christmas Carol".

First published in 1840 something.

It was sold out, since then, lots of different mmh have been created.

It's still a popular Christmas tale today.

So pause the video and have to think.

First published in 1843.

It's sold out very quickly.

Since then, lots of different versions or creations or interpretations or adaptations been created.

Any one of those would have been fine.

Still popular Christmas tale today.

Okay, let's do some text analysis.

Now in today's lesson, we're analysing a character.

And the character we're going to analyse is Ebeneezer Scrooge, my turn, your turn, Ebeneezer Scrooge.

Ebeneezer Scrooge is the main character in "A Christmas Carol" and he's a very well-known Christmas character.

He's often referred to simply as Scrooge.

Today we're going to be using two texts to analyse Ebeneezer Scrooge.

We're going to using the original text, the actual official Charles Dickens' 1843 version.

And then we're going to be using a modern interpretation of the text by Tony Mitton.

It's a picture book and the text is presented in verse.

So it's rhyming, it rhymes.

So really beautifully put together modern adaptation of the Christmas Carol.

We're going to represent everything we learn about Scrooge today like this.

So we're going to create a mind map, it's screwed in the middle.

And you can see that I've decorated my mind map with a variety of adjectives.

These are just examples, so as the lesson goes on, you'll find adjectives of your own.

Under each of these adjectives we're going to supply a series of explanations.

So if you tell me that he's lonely I expect to see a few examples or pieces of evidence or explanations as to why he's lonely.

Same goes for any other adjective you come up with.

So we're not just adding adjectives which we think are appropriate, we're actually explaining how and why we came to that conclusion.

If you need some time to get your mind back ready, pause the video now.

This is the first image we're going to use analyse Scrooge.

This is from the modern day interpretations, is not from the original.

So there's a lot here.

There's a lot here.

This might seem like a simple picture but actually we can learn an awful lot from justice.

I'm going to zoom in on his face.

There we go.

That's going to make our life a little bit easier.

I like you to use this image to see if there's anything you can learn about Scrooge.

What does this image tell us about Scrooge? Pause the video now.

I've looked quite carefully at this image and I spotted a few clues which are telling me a few different things about Scrooge or main character.

First, I noticed his facial expression.

He has a furrowed brow.

He's doing what I'm doing now with my eyebrows.

This suggests to me he's quite angry or grumpy.

This is often something people do when they're angry or grumpy.

You can see how I'm getting these wrinkles in between my eyebrows.

I can also see that his shoulders hunched, shoulders are hunched up, which suggests to me again, that he's not in an especially good mood and he's not feeling very relaxed.

He doesn't look like somebody who's very relaxed.

I'm going to look at his room, the room he's in.

First, I noticed how grand it is.

This looks like the room of a wealthy, wealthy person.

We have this huge fireplace behind him with what looks like a big mirror above the massive windows.

I look how many chairs there are sat at this table.

Speaking of the chairs, what do you notice about them? Could you come in and sit down with one of these chairs? Why not? Well, it's because they're all covered.

So well he does have lots of chairs, he's obviously not very used to people sitting out there, because he's covered them all up.

So possibly somebody who spent lots of time by himself and therefore, maybe unfriendly but also perhaps he's lonely.

Since he's all by himself.

You can see that again.

I think that's reinforced with this solitary candle, which is all he has the light up his room.

He looks like he's very wealthy, we can tell that from the size of the room, yet he's only using this tiny little candle.

He's not using the huge fireplace behind him.

That seems a little strange to me.

I wonder why he's made that decision.

This has the next piece of information we're going to make use of.

We have here an image and the accompanying text.

And this is again from the modern version of "A Christmas Carol".

I like to look very carefully in this text while I read out loud.

"Our story starts on Christmas Eve as day was dying down.

"Old Scrooge sat checking his accounts as ever with a frown.

"His clerk Bob Cratchit sat nearby "scratching with his quill.

"From time to time, he rubbed his hands "to warm them from the chill.

"For Scrooge being mean and miserly "would keep his chamber cold.

"The way he'd measure out the coal.

"You'd think that's it were gold." So there's a lot in that.

I'd like you to have really careful think, using this image and this text.

What have you learned about Scrooge? Pause the video now.

Now your mind map will already be growing with adjectives describing Scrooge.

Remember to include your evidence.

We're going to find some evidence now.

I've picked out what I consider to be the really notable bits of text.

Here they are.

"Old Scrooge sat checking his accounts "as ever with a frown." The suggestion here is that he's always got a frown on his face.

You don't frown when you're happy, you don't frown when you're excited, you don't frown when you're feeling jolly.

When do you frown? Give me some adjectives you may be from and you're upset, when you're sad, when you're confused, when you're angry, those are generally negative adjectives describing negative traits.

That's an interesting one, with a frown.

Later on in the text I can see, "For Scrooge being mean and miserly." The word miserly is one that we're going to look at in lots of detail.

It basically is a really nice synonym for somebody who is not generous.

Somebody who is lacking generosity.

And then we've got the word mean.

"Would keep his chamber cold." His chamber, his room, again is the room of a rich man.

Yeah, he's choosing to keep it cold.

So again, he sounds like somebody who is unwilling to spend much money even though by the looks of things, he has a lot.

he's unwilling to spend much of it or share much of it.

He's mean, he's miserly, he keeps his chamber cold.

We've got a statement here which we are going to use to analyse Scrooge.

"The way someone treats others tells you a lot about them." I'll let you think about this statement.

The way someone treats others tells me much about them.

You're going to tell me whether you agree with this statement or whether you disagree with this statement.

If you agree or disagree, I don't really mind.

What I do want to see is that you are justifying your choice.

I agree with this statement because, for example.

I disagree with this statement because, for example.

Have careful think.

"The way someone treats others tells you a lot about them." Do you agree or disagree, and why? Pause the video? I agree with this statement.

I think the way someone treats others tells you lots of them.

Because if somebody treats somebody well, it shows you that they're kind.

If somebody is patient and caring and respectful of others.

It shows you that they care about other people that they themselves are a good person.

In my opinion, the way someone treats others does tell you a lot about them.

Let's investigate how Scrooge treats other people.

Here we have a picture of Scrooge working away at his desk behind him his clerk, a clerk is somebody who works for you.

Doing lots of administrative things.

For example, filling out forms and counting money.

You can see the clerk behind him, whose name is Bob Cratchit.

He's holding his scarf in a way that I would describe as nervous.

He looks fairly nervous.

People often fiddle when they're nervous.

I feel as though he's perhaps fiddling with his scarf, nervous to ask a question.

Let's check the text.

"The office clock chimed closing time.

"Bob Cratchit gave a cough.

""Tomorrow's Christmas Days, sir.

""So may I take it off?" "Scrooge gave Bob a narrow look.

""A day off? ""If you must, but I won't pay you for that day." "His voice was dry as dust." So what does this tell us about Scrooge? We need some adjectives and we need some evidence for those adjectives.

Pause the video now.

I really zeroed in on this part of the text.

Scrooge gave Bob and narrow look, "A day off, if you must." So he seems so unwilling to give him a day off.

Ordinarily you could maybe understand that, giving somebody a day off for no reason, perhaps wouldn't expect that of someone, but hang on a second.

Which day are we talking about here? That's right, Christmas Day.

So here is Scrooge showing unwillingness to give Bob Cratchit a day off on Christmas Day.

From this I can tell or I can guess, I can infer that Scrooge is unkind.

He is not a generous man.

We see that evident even more when he goes on to say, "But I won't pay you for that day." It's normal that you get certain amount of days off a year and you get paid for those days.

It's considered a right.

Scrooge doesn't agree.

He's begrudgingly giving him a day off.

So he's doing it even though he doesn't want to.

And he certainly isn't going to pay.

So I'm already getting the impression here, that Scrooge is an unkind man.

If I were filling out my mind-map, I might write unkind as an adjective, as evidence, I might say, Scrooge was unwilling to pay Bob for his day off on Christmas Day.

That would be my evidence.

I have another statement for you here.

"The way other people treat someone "tells you lots about them, about the person." The way other people treat someone, tells you a lot about the person that they treat that way.

Have you think about this once again? Just some statements that explain why you agree or disagree.

Pause the video now.

Okay, this is a tricky one.

I think in most cases you can tell if somebody is a nice person because other people treat them well.

Generally people treat nice people well.

Because they really respect them, and they're really grateful for them, and they like being around them.

Have to be a bit careful 'cause unfortunately this is not always the case.

Everybody will have experienced in life being treated unkindly, even if they with themselves of being kind.

So while this is not always the case, you can sometimes get an impression as to what somebody is like, by the way other people treat them.

Well you guys investigate how people cheat Scrooge.

I want you to think about what this tells us about Scrooge.

We going to do this using the original text.

So I have not changed a single word, we're looking at the words written by Charles Dickens all the way back in 1843, the original.

You can see that the section I've chosen is quite big.

This is the section I've chosen.

It's quite a big chunk.

So what we're going to do is we're going to break it up like this, and we're going to analyse one section at a time.

This is the section we're going to look at first.

"Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, "with gladsome looks, "My dear Scrooge, how are you? "When will you come to see me?" We're going to analyse this piece of text in a second but there's something I think we need to look at first in some detail, we have a peculiar word in the sentence and it's a word which perhaps you haven't heard before.

I'm going to read the sentence again.

I wonder if you know the word I'm talking about.

"Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, "with gladsome looks, "My dear Scrooge, how are you? ""When will you come to see me?"" And the word I'm talking about is this one.

"Gladsome," that's a strange word.

And it's one that we probably haven't heard before.

That's if we can figure out what it means.

The first step into figuring out what it means, is thinking about its word class.

Is it an adjective? A noun, a verb or an adverb? Does it describe a noun, is it a person place or thing? Is it a doing word or does it describe a verb? In order to pick this out, let's look at where it comes in the sentence.

"With gladsome looks." So it's coming alongside the word looks, which is a noun, a look is a noun.

You give someone, you give them a look.

So with gladsome looks, he looks to me as though this word is describing then noun looks.

Which of these four types of word, adjective, noun, verb or adverb describes a noun.

Have a careful think, pause the video if you need.

It's an adjective.

So it's describing a noun and therefore it's an adjective.

This is really useful, so it's an adjective.

We can look within this strange adjective, gladsome, what we can do is we can look within it for a word with which we are familiar.

If I look at gladsome carefully I can spot a word, which I have seen before.

I wonder if you can too.

Which word can you spot inside gladsome that you've seen before? Glad.

Something to do with the word glad, and it's an adjective.

Glad something looks, glad looks.

I think we have enough now to make a guess of its definition.

So what I'd like you to do is pause the video, See if you can come up with the definition or at the very least a synonym for gladsome.

Pause the video now.

So gladsome means cheerful or happy and it's an adjective.

So in this instance, we're talking about cheerful or happy looks.

We're in a really good position now to unpick this sentence "Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, "with gladsome looks, " my dear Scrooge, how are you? ""When will you come to see me?"" So pause the video and have a careful look.

What does this piece of text tell us about Scrooge? So there's nobody stopping him in the street to say, "How are you doing? "When are you going to come and see me?" That suggests that maybe people aren't used to him being friendly to them.

You're unlikely to invite somebody around to come and see you unlikely to ask about them, if they're unfriendly towards you.

If they were a friendly sociable person, you probably would stop in the street and speak to them.

But here we're being told that nobody ever stopped him in the street to say with gladsome looks, my dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me? And as another piece of evidence.

So if you've picked an adjective out of this, there's your evidence.

Let's look at the next section.

"No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, "no children asked him what it was o'clock, "no man or woman ever once in all his life "inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge." Remember this book was written 180 years ago or so, and therefore some of the language used is unfamiliar.

So I'm going to help you unpick some of those unfamiliar words and terms. "Bestow a trifle" is a strange term which we probably wouldn't hear today.

"No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle." To implore somebody to do something, is kind of to beg them to do it.

So no baggers are begging him to give a little gift, to bestow a trifle means to give a little gift.

So no beggars are asking him to give them a little gift.

Why'd you think that might be? Why is nobody willing to ask him for a little gift even now at Christmas time, when it's very cold outside.

I like you to pause the video and have a think.

It's likely that they're not happy to ask him for a gift because perhaps they know he's not going to give them one.

And there's no point asking somebody for a gift if they're definitely not going to give you one.

So again, I'm getting the impression here that he's not in especially generous man.

"Even the blind men's dogs appeared to know him; "and when they saw him coming on, would tug that owners "into doorways and up courts; "and then would wag their tails as though they said, ""No eye at all is better than an evil eye.

."" So first thing to consider here is, "Even dogs." Even dogs appear to know him.

And when they saw him coming, they would pull their owners, their blind owners, into doorways, out of the way, up courts, completely out of his way.

And then they wag their tails as though they said, "No eye at all is better than an evil eye." This is a hard phrase, but it's a really good one.

It's as though they're saying to their owners listen, you might not be able to see at all, but at least you're not evil.

Who might they be talking about when they're saying, at least you're not evil.

That's right, Scrooge.

So that's look carefully at this section.

What does it tell us about Scrooge? We're thinking still about how other people treat Scrooge and here we have not even other people, we have animals here treating him in a certain way.

How are they treating him and why? Pause the video.

So they're treating him by avoiding him at all costs.

They're doing everything they can to avoid him.

Even blind men's dogs suggest to us that he's maybe a scary character.

Dogs might be scared of him or maybe dogs know to avoid him 'cause he's mean and unkind.

The fact that people know to treat him this way suggests he has a bit of a reputation to being maybe unkind or unfriendly.

Now, at this point we're still just putting a few clues together but we're getting to a point where we can really tell quite a lot about Scrooge.

Let's summarise what we've learned so far.

What I've done here is I've given you four adjectives which I think describe Scrooge.

Your job is to put them into a Diamond 4.

The adjective that you put at the top is the one that you think describes him best.

The two in the middle, describe him equally well, second best, and then there was one of the button.

Doesn't describe him as well as the other three.

This is not to say the one in the bottom doesn't describe him, it's just a question of which go where and that's completely up to you.

So we have unkind.

We have miserly.

Now just a quick reminder, miserly means you're not generous.

If you're miserly you're not generous.

Then we have mean.

Now mean can also be used to mean ungenerous.

However, as we know, it often used to mean unkind.

So it's a bit of a combination word.

And finally we have weak.

Now you can be physically weak, but you can also be mentally weak.

Weak in the mind.

So I'll let you to have a juggling these around and putting them in the order you'd like.

Pause the video, now the go.

Next I'd like you to justify a choice.

I think Scrooge is something because what I'd like you to do is I like you to take the adjective that was at the top of your Diamond.

Maybe it was unkind, miserly, mean or weak, and your job is to justify it.

Remember you have all of those pieces of evidence from your mind map, all of which will be really useful here.

I think Scrooge is mmh because, and that's where you justify it.

So pause the video and I'll be good.

Congratulations, that's the end of the lesson.

Well done.

Today we have recapped, we've done a text analysis and we've summarised.

Well done of all of your hard work, you've competed your lesson.