Lesson video

Hi there.

My name is Mr Bryne Smith.

And today we're going to be doing some reading together.

Now today's lesson is the fifth of five lessons on Charles Dickens', "A Christmas Carol." In today's lesson, we're going to be analysing a theme.

We're going to be looking at transformation.

It's going to be really fun.

So let's make a start.

Here's the agenda for today's lesson.

First, we're going to have a quick introduction and reminder of what's happened so far.

Then we're going to do some text analysis before finally summarising what we've learned today, and in this unit.

In this lesson, you will need an exercise book or paper, a pencil, and of course your brain, which you mustn't forget.

So, if you need to get any of these things, pause the video now.

Okay.

Time for our introduction.

I'd like you to babel gabble the first three pictures of the story.

Now these pictures are chosen, which I think represent what happens in the story.

And a babel gabble, is when you talk through what happens in each picture, and I'd like you to apply a medium amount of detail.

So I don't want you to settle for one sentence.

Equally, I don't want you to go on and on and on and on.

So you need to find something in the middle.

Quick description of each of these three pictures.

off you go.

Okay.

So we have Scrooge sat at his desk.

This is all kind of setting description, a quick explanation of who he is and what he's like.

Then we have his old friend, Marley, the Ghost of Marley visiting him, warning him of what's to come before the Ghost of Christmas past arise and shows him around in the memories of his past.

Let's do the same for the next three.

Three pictures here.

Again, babble gabble and I want a medium amount of detail.

So pause the video.

Off you go.

Right here.

So we have Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas present seeing the presence or seeing things that happening in his current lifetime.

So the family of Bob Cratchit and what they're up to.

Then we have the Ghost of Christmas future who takes him to visit his own grave.

Before finally this image representing Scrooge, his transformation.

Here he is leaning out the window with joy.

Joy at the fact that he is better.

He's a nice person.

He can appreciate the world and he's alive to do it.

Now, today, we're looking at the theme of transformation.

So it's really important that we actually know what transformation is.

Otherwise, we're going to struggle.

Now already useful way of delving into a word, and what it means is by looking for a word in the word.

So if I look at this word transformation and I can spot a word inside it.

The word is transform.

Okay.

So what does transform mean? And therefore what you think transformation means? I'd let you to pause the video and have a think, pause the video now.

Right here.

Let's see if we get through to the definition of some sort.

Transformation is a noun which means a significant, important or dramatic change.

Here, it is in a sentence.

The school's transformation from a crumbling ruin into a state of the art facility was amazing.

The school's transformation significant change from a crumbling ruin into a state of the art facility was amazing.

Now, can you think of a character in our story who has undergone a significant transformation? Let me think this is a tough one.

It's Scrooge, well of course it's Scrooge.

Today, we're looking at transformation specifically with regards to Scrooge, our main character.

Let's do some text analysis.

Now we'll be analysing text and images today.

First we're going to consider face and expression.

We're going to look at Scrooge's face at the beginning of the story and at the end, and we're going to compare them and discuss the transformation that he made.

On the left-hand side.

You can see three images of scrooge's face at the beginning of the story earlier on.

The right hand side, you can see three images I've taken.

Scrooge, at the end of the story.

After he had met all of the ghosts, after he had woken up on Christmas morning realising he was still alive, realising he could.

He was alive to appreciate everything around him.

So first, what I'd like you to do is, describe the faces on the left-hand side, from the beginning of the story.

How would you describe them? And therefore, how would you describe Scrooge? Pause the video and have a think.

Okay.

So on the left hand side we have the face of somebody unpleasant.

Somebody mean.

He's got a furrowed brow in all three of those pictures.

Very aggressively furrowed brow.

And the first he's almost raising an eyebrow.

He's looking over to Bob, through the side of his eye with almost content, which is dislike.

When he's in bed there, he's all hunched over and seen when he's at the dinner table, he's really hunched over.

He doesn't look like a pleasant man or one that you'd like to speak to.

Or a man that's enjoying life.

On the right-hand side by comparison.

He is overjoyed in all of these pictures.

He has his mouth open in them all.

He has his brow raised in a kind of positive, open way.

The complete opposite to the eyebrows that I can see in the first.

In the first picture they are like this.

And the second picture there like this.

So the illustrators obviously tried really carefully there to represent just through his brow to represent how he's feeling.

And he has a smile on his face, which he definitely does not have in the first three.

Let's think about colour, because clever, clever illustrator has also used colour to represent this change.

How are the colours different? The pictures on the left, the pictures on the right.

Pause the video and have a think.

Okay.

So the pictures on the left are dark and dingy.

They're greyish blues.

Blue is a colour often associated with sadness.

On the right hand side.

They're warm colours.

They're warm colours like yellow and red and orange, colours often associated with happiness and joy.

Especially yellow.

A yellowish tint is really joyful.

So what sorts of transformation does best represent? In these images, what transformation has Scrooge made? He's gone from being what to being what? Pause the video and have a think.

Okay.

Now we're going to look at how he treats others.

So first of all, I'm representing this using images.

You have two images, one on the left.

This is him, looking down at Bob Cratchit.

When Bob asked for Christmas day off.

And then the image is on the right, is him handing over shilling to the young man saying, "If you take this talk into the Cratchit household, here's a shilling just for you." Shilling was lots of money at that point in time.

So, I'd you to think about the difference.

First of all, think about the image on the left.

How's he treating Bob.

And then the image on the right, how's he treating the boy, and how are they different? Remember the first image happens at the beginning of the story and the second at the very end.

So this will help us understand the kind of transformation he's made throughout the story.

Pause the video and how to think.

Okay.

So in the image on the left, he's looking down at Bob and he looks as though he hates him.

He either looks as though he hates him or as though he just doesn't care about him at all.

The way he has that raised eyebrows.

He's always just looking at him out the side in his eye.

He's not even bothering to stop writing or to turn his whole head or body to speak him.

It seems as though he doesn't really care for Bob, and he's not willing to treat him very well.

In the other picture by contrast, Scrooge has a beaming smile on his face and he's looking down at the boy with his beaming smile.

And he's reaching out to give him the coin.

The very act itself is giving the boys something money to help him in something is a generous thing to do.

Compare that with what's happening in the first picture.

Well, Scrooge is in the process of saying, "Well, you can have Christmas day off if you must, but I'm not going to pay you." Certainly not a generous thing to do.

So what's the transformation.

How has Scrooge changed from the first picture to the second.

Pause the video and how to think Okay.

Now we going to engage with the text itself.

So this is the original Charles Dickens text.

And as we know, sometimes the original child, they can text since it's almost 200 years old.

He uses words with which we're not familiar.

So let's go slowly.

We have two pieces of text, one on the left, which is from the beginning of the story.

It's a description of Scrooge or any of his speech.

It's a bit of.

A bit of Scrooge dialogue.

There we have the bit on the right, which comes from the end of the story.

We're still thinking of how he treats other people here.

So we're going to consider both pieces of texts.

And we're going to think about what they tell us about how he treats others.

So, "Merry Christmas every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.

He should!" Wow.

So that's Scrooge at the beginning of the story.

This is him at the end.

"A merry Christmas, Bob! A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow than I have given you, for many a year! I'll raise your salary and endeavour to assist your struggling family.

And we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon Bob! Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another I Bob Cratchit!" Okay.

Wow.

A real difference here.

I'd like you to think very carefully about what kind of a person we're dealing with here.

So in the first piece of text, how does Scrooge treat other people? And how do you know? In the second piece of text, how does Scrooge treat other people and how do you know? Pause the video and have a think? Okay.

So we have a few big clues.

Every idiot, hang on a second.

Even to cool people.

Idiots is a really unkind thing to do.

So he's already got off to a bad stop.

Merry, every idiot who goes around with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled in his own pudding.

Now, obviously he's exaggerating but still a horrible thing to say.

And buried with a stake of holly through his heart.

Now, again, Scrooge is exaggerating.

But he's still saying that anybody saying Merry Christmas, deserves bad things to happen to them.

That's hardly somebody who treats others kindly.

Now in the second piece of text, A merry Christmas Bob! A merrier Christmas Bob, my good fellow.

Now look how he's.

Look how he's, what he's calling people now.

In that first piece of text from the beginning of the story, he used the word idiot.

Now he's using the phrase, "my good fellow." Already a massive change.

Massive improvement.

I'll raise your salary and endeavoured to assist your struggling family.

Endeavour means try.

I'll try to assist your struggling family.

So at the beginning, we know that Scrooge was not keen on even giving Bob, the Christmas day off and he wasn't going to pay him.

And now he's going to raise his salary.

So he's going to pay him more and he's going to try and assist Bob's struggling family.

And he says, "Make up the fires." Which means put more coal on the fire.

He's not being stingy about it anymore.

He's being generous.

So how has the way Scrooge treats other people changed? And how does this text prove it? Pause the video now.

Okay.

So I think Scrooge treats people much, much, much better.

And that's the nature of his transformation.

He's gone from being really unkind to people, to being really generous to people.

Now let's look at how other people treat him.

So we have two sets of images, one on the left, and then on the right.

In the first we see Bob approaching him, about ask for Christmas day off.

So he's about to ask a favour of him.

And then the other side, we have Bob with Scrooge on Christmas day.

And this is right at the end of the book.

So this is Scrooge having approach Bob, to wish him a merry Christmas.

And underneath that, we have Scrooge with lots of family and friends, and they're treating him in a way that we hadn't seen before.

They're treating him very differently to how characters did at the beginning of the story.

So, could you describe for me, how are people treating Scrooge in the first image and how are they in the second image? And how are those two things different? Pause the video now.

Okay.

So the first image we can see Bob approaching him and he's very nervous.

He's talking at his scarf.

It looks as though he doesn't want to talk to him.

He doesn't want to ask him any favours because he's worried about what he's going to say.

He has his shoulders hunched and he has his mouth pursed, his lips pursed.

Looking as though he doesn't even want to utter a single word.

And then we compare that with the images on the right.

Well, Bob's looking at him, he's smiling at him.

Look at his big smile and Scrooge has his arm on his shoulder.

Below that we have a family,.

There somebody with their hand on his shoulder, and everybody's looking at him.

And everybody is smiling at him.

Complete opposite the way Bob's treating him at the beginning.

Now what does this tell us about Scrooge in his transformation? The fact that people are treating him better.

Pause the video now.

Okay.

So it tells us that people like him more, people are treating him better because they like him more.

They're being less aware and scared of him because they like him more.

He's a better person.

They're more willing to treat him well.

And they're more willing to spend time with him.

And that's natural.

People liked spending time with nice people.

That's understandable.

Okay.

Let's see if we can have a go at completing this graph.

No.

I know this isn't maths but we're going to have a go at a graph.

So along the bottom, we have one two, three, four, five, six images of the story.

So they represent different points in the story, key points.

And I know they're very small but these are images that we've looked at a fair few times.

So we have Scrooge at his desk.

The Ghost of Marley.

The Ghost to the Christmas past, and present and future.

And then Scrooge leaning out the window with happiness all across his face.

Now we're going to think about what Scrooge is like as a person.

We're going to think about whether or not he's a good person or a bad person at each of these points.

In each of these pictures.

Now he can be somewhere in between.

That's completely fine.

So you might want to put him at the beginning.

You might have to put him right down at the bottom, but maybe he worked his way up slightly at first.

Maybe he makes his way up quickly or maybe he doesn't make his way up at all.

It's up to you.

So each of those pictures, how does Scrooge change? If you'd like, you can draw one of your own.

That might be easier actually.

You draw one of your own, and you can number each of those pictures one, two, three, four, five, six.

It won't take long.

It's very quick, easy way of representing Scrooge's change.

So pause the video and have a go.

Okay.

Let's look at mine.

I decided at the beginning he was down here.

He was a bad person.

If I could have done, I would have put him off the bottom.

He was such a bad person.

And it felt as though, he met Marley.

He didn't seem to be that bothered about it.

So I didn't actually change anything there.

When he meets the Ghost of Christmas past, he sees his past self.

And I feel like seeing that little boy sat on the bench helped him improve slightly before Christmas present where he improves more because he sees Bob Cratchits family.

And then Christmas future when he sees his own grave, he's becoming a better person.

And then it's when he wakes up, I think.

And he realises how lucky he is and how unlucky some other people are.

I think it's at that point that he becomes such a good person, a much better person.

So that's my graph.

I wonder what yours looked like.

Maybe it looks the same.

Maybe it looks slightly different.

Now I've come up with some statements.

I'd like you to decide which of these statements describes Scrooge's transformation best, and why.

Now there's not necessarily a right answer here.

It's your opinion.

So you just need to be ready to justify or explain your choice.

Anyone can change.

You're never too old to improve yourself.

Good deeds make up for bad ones.

So we know that Scrooge has transformed.

Which of the statements do you think goes with Scrooge's transformation the best.

Which do you think is the best match for his transformation and why? How they think about this one, it's not easy.

Pause the video now.

Okay.

Really good question.

That one.

I think, and it's hard.

It's hard to think.

I think elements of all three are true and actually they're but all three of them are really thought provoking statements.

So they make you think a lot.

I think my favourite is probably, you're never too old to improve yourself because Scrooge got to a point in his life where he seemed to.

He seemed to feel like he didn't need to be a nice person anymore.

Almost like he had got to a point in life when it wasn't necessary to treat people well.

But actually I don't think you ever reach that point in life.

Nobody has that luxury of not bothering to treat people well.

I think everybody has a responsibility to treat people well.

So if it's out of laziness or loneliness or sadness that you treat people badly, wow, you need to do something about it.

You need to try your hardest because I think it's really important in life to be respectful and kind and caring.

Maybe the most important thing.

So that's why I prefer that.

So let's summarise what we've looked at today.

Moral.

If you could choose a moral of the story, what would it be? So this is a lesson that we've learned.

If you could choose a moral of the story, what would it be? What lesson have you learned? Pause the video now.

Okay.

And then what could you think? Have you enjoyed studying A Christmas Carol? Why have you enjoyed it? If so, and if not, why not? Would you recommend it to anybody else and why? Pause the video and have a think.

Okay.

Well done.

Congratulations.

Today we have recapped what we've learned so far.

We've done some text analysis, and we have summarised so well done.

I'm very impressed.

Congratulations through your hard work.

You've competed through a lesson and the whole unit.

Good job.