Pre-show Activity

Activities

1.1 Children feel safe, secure, and supported.

1.2 Children develop their emerging autonomy, inter-dependence, resilience and sense of agency.

1.3 Children develop knowledgeable and confident self-identities.

1.4 Children learn to interact in relation to others with care, empathy and respect.

Teacher-led discussion on how to remember etiquette in the theatre, using your fingers on your hand. Hand raised, fingers out-stretched, each digit represents a reminder:

1. eyes look
2. ears listen
3. mouth closed
4. hands still
5. feet quiet

What else can hands do?

Discuss different types of applause and then practice:

1. A “Round” of Applause – students create a circle in the air, while applauding.
2. Fairy Claps – students use two fingers on both hands to generate applause.
3. Crab Applause – Students use a pincer grip on both hands to create a clap.
4. Silent Cheer – students put their arms in the air and wiggle their fingers and open their mouth as if they are yelling loudly. They can make as much “noise” for the applause, as long as it’s silent!

Getting involved

Children need to know that showing their appreciation by clapping or laughing when it’s funny is great. They also need to know that sometimes the actors will invite them to respond. They might ask them where someone is, or if they can see something, or to join them in a dance, then it’s okay to respond. The actors will let them know when it’s time to sit down and listen again.

Pre-show Activities

2.1 Children develop a sense of belonging to groups and communities and an understanding of the reciprocal rights and responsibilities necessary for active community participation.

2.2 Children respond to diversity with respect.

EXPLORE & APPLY 

Teacher-led, whole group activity

Students sit in a circle to discuss:

• the different places they have been
• how we respond/behave differently in those places

Some places to explore and discuss:

• live theatre (could be in a theatre or outdoor performance)
• football match
• music concert
• wedding

What are the similarities and differences?

• What does it sound like? (example – loud voices, quiet voices or no voices)
• What does it look like?

Before the performance

Using the Theatre Etiquette as a guide remind students about:

• following instructions from the teacher, the usher and the performers
• using “the hand” technique for staying tuned-in when watching theatre.

• Critical and creative thinking
• Personal and social capability
• Ethical understanding

Post-show Activities

2.4 Children become socially responsible and show respect for the environment.

Whole group discussion

Have the students reflect on Grug’s interaction with his environment. Have them list out the different ways that Grug took care of the natural world around him. Then have them discuss different ways they can, like Grug, take care of the world around them.

• Critical and creative thinking
• Ethical understanding

Pre-show Activity

Activities

3.1 Children become strong in their social and emotional wellbeing.

3.2 Children take increasing responsibility for their own health and physical wellbeing.

Play a piece of upbeat music and ask your students how it makes them feel. Now play them a more sombre piece, and repeat the question. Make a list of things that make them happy and excited, and things that make them sad or reflective. Now ask them to create movements with their body to show those emotions without using words (e.g. high energy jumping or skipping for happy, slow walking with heads down for sad etc). Put their movements to the music tracks you used previously.

Building on this work, ask your students what they would do if they saw someone who was feeling sad. How could we cheer them up? Create a movement sequence expressing their ideas.

• Critical and creative thinking
• Personal and social capability

Post-Show Activities

Activities

3.1 Children become strong in their social and emotional wellbeing.

During the activities you carry out, model and explain resilience and managing with frustrations when faced with a challenge.

3.2 Children take increasing responsibility for their own health and physical wellbeing.

Ask your students if they remember how Grug solved the problem of being hungry (growing food). How do we get our food?How do we keep our bodies healthy and working well? Discuss healthy foods and sometimes foods.

Make a chart using pictures of different food items and ask your students to sort them into the two categories.

• Literacy
• Critical and creative thinking
• Personal and social capability

Pre-show Activities

4.1 Children develop dispositions for learning such as curiosity, cooperation, confidence, creativity, commitment, enthusiasm, persistence, imagination and reflexivity.

What’s in an ending

Teacher reads a Grug book to the class, except the last two pages.

Discuss with students:

• what do they know about the ending of stories?
• what happens
• how does it make the reader feel?

Students predict what they think happens at the end of the Grug story you are reading.

• Now read the final 2 pages
• Does it match what they had predicted?
• Does the story work with another ending? If ‘yes’ why? If ‘no’ why not?

• Literacy
• Personal and social capability
• Ethical understanding

Post-show Activities

4.2 Children develop a range of skills and processes such as problem solving, inquiry, experimentation, hypothesising, researching and investigating.

4.3 Children transfer and adapt what they have learned from one context to another.

4.4 Children resource their own learning through connecting with people, place, technologies and natural and processed materials.

Discuss how Grug grew his food. Working in groups, have the students plant seeds either in a school garden or pot and then discuss growth as a group. Ask them what it’s like to grow a plant, did they remember to water it? What environmental factors have an impact plant growth?

• Critical and creative thinking
• Personal and social capability

Pre-show Activities

5.1 Children interact verbally and non-verbally with others for a range of purposes.

5.2 Children engage with a range of texts and gain meaning from these texts.

5.3 Children express ideas and make meaning using a range of media.

5.4 Children begin to understand how symbols and pattern systems work.

5.5 Children use information and communication technologies to access information, investigate ideas and represent their thinking.

Have a range of books based on friendship and resilience available for your students to look at. Rotate the stories as the feature story of the week and discuss your students’ thoughts on each book. Which was their favourite and why? Which ones didn’t they like as much and why?

Explain that when you go to see the show Grug, there will be characters who become friends and solve problems together . Ask your students to look out for those characters (Grug and Cara the Carpet Snake) and discuss their friendship after the performance.

• Literacy
• Critical and creative thinking
• Ethical understanding
• Intercultural understanding

Post-show Activities

5.3 Children express ideas and make meaning using a range of media.

5.4 Children begin to understand how symbols and pattern systems work.

Create Cara the Carpet Snake

After a group discussion and some teacher-led research on snakes that answers questions like:

• what do we know about carpet snakes?
• where do carpet snakes live?
• what do you think they like to eat?
• where would we find snakes like Cara?

Encourage the students to make their own carpet snakes out of paper:

• Prepare 3cm wide strips of different coloured paper
• choose two different colours
• join strips with glue or staples, at right angles
• Fold each strip over each-other to create a concertina effect
• Repeat folding the strips
• Secure final fold with glue or staple
• Cut a round piece of paper and stick to the end of the body to create a face, draw on eyes and other details.

Students can then use a combination of found and created materials to create a habitat for their carpet snake in the form of a diorama.

• Literacy
• Numeracy
• Critical and creative thinking
• Personal and social capability

Pre-show Activity

LITERATURE

Activity: A character’s point of view

What you’ll need: A selection of Grug books

Read a selection of Grug books that contain Grug and at least one other character (Cara, Snoot or incidental characters like the Snail, Crab, Worm, Fish and so on)

Ask students to comment on the stories.

• Which are their favourites?
• Who is the story about? The main character?
• What about the other characters?
• What do you think the other characters think about the situations they find themselves in?

Model the idea of telling the story from a minor characters perspective using one of the stories. Students can now do the same – considering the voice of the chosen character.

Things to consider:

• Will the response be written, role play, multi-model, drawings.
• Will the response be individual or a co-creation.
• The response will be in first person. What perspective is Grug written in? This will be a good time to introduce, remind or extend knowledge of perspective.

Content Description

Foundation:

Engaging with and responding to literature

• Respond to stories and share feelings and thoughts about their events and characters. (AC9EFLE02)

Creating literature

• Retell and adapt familiarliterary texts through play, performance, images or writing. (AC9EFLE05)

Year 1:

Engaging with and responding to literature

• Discuss literary texts and share responses by making connections with students’ own experiences. (AC9E1LE02)

Creating literature

• Orally retell or adapt a familiarstory using plot and characters, language features including vocabulary, and structure of a familiar text, through role-play, writing, drawing or digital tools. (AC9E1LE05)

Year 2:

Engaging with and responding to literature

• Identify features of literary texts, such as characters and settings, and give reasons for personal preferences. (AC9E2LE02)

Creating literature

• Create and edit literary texts by adapting structures and language features of familiar literary texts through drawing, writing, performance and digital tools. (AC9E2LE05)

LITERACY

Activity: Interview Grug!

What you’ll need: Stationery for older students to write things down

Tell the students that when they see Grug they will be meeting a very famous character. The children can pretend that they are journalists getting ready to interview Grug. Discuss the following –

• What is an interview? Why interview someone?
• Watch or listen to a couple of interviews (look at shows made for young people such as BTN). Older students could read transcripts.
• What do you already know about Grug? How can this help you write your questions?
• What types of questions require detailed answers? Eg. avoid questions that result in ‘yes’, ‘no’ answers.
• What type of language will you use? Is Grug an adult or a child or neither? Do you need to be formal or like a friend?
• What would you like to find out?
• Will all of your questions be planned or will you make some up on the spot?

Explicitly show the children how to interview by either interviewing a child, another teacher or allow them to interview you. Encourage them to ask new questions based on what they hear.

Ask students to work in pairs or small groups to come up with questions that have for Grug. Compile these into a class list and keep them to use after you have seen the show. Older students can create or co-create their own interview.

*“Interview Grug Part 2” is in the ‘after the show’ section.

Content Description

Foundation:

Texts in context

• Identify some familiar texts, such as stories and informative texts, and their purpose. (AC9EFLY01)

Year 1:

Texts in context

• Discuss different texts and identify some features that indicate their purpose. (AC9E1LY01)

Year 2:

Texts in context

• Identify how similar topics and information are presented in different types of texts (AC9E2LY01)

• Literacy
• Critical and creative thinking
• Personal and social capability
• Intercultural understanding

Post-Show Activities

LANGUAGE

Activity: Grug in Chapters

What you’ll need: A selection of books – Grug, interconnected short stories and simple chapter books. Stationery and/or computers.

Lead a discussion about the live performance of Grug.

• How many stories did you see? List them.
• How did you know when a new story started? How did you know it had ended?
• Did the stories have a beginning, middle and an end?
• How did the artists tie the stories together? Think about action, repeated motifs, set, music, structure etc.

Have a look at the different book options at hand. What do the students notice? Are the Grug books stand-alone stories? Do they interconnect? Find a chapter book and identify the chapters. Did the Grug performance team create chapters out of stand-alone stories?

As a class or in groups of five or more, choose another character from either the Grug books or the live performance. Explain that the students are going to create their own character driven book series. Each student will write and/or draw their own story about the chosen character. There will be a lot of room to invent! Prompts can be used here – perhaps in the form of setting, object or action suggestions. Ensure that the format is the same for each student so that eventually the stories can be put together into a hard copy or digital book.

Extension/Modification:

• More complex features can be explored with older students such as orientation, climax and resolution.
• Older students could create the stories for a younger audience and ask younger students to illustrate.

Content Description

Foundation:

Text structure and organisation

• Understand that texts can take many forms such as signs, books and digital texts. (AC9EFLA03)

Year 1:

Text structure and organisation

• Explore how texts are organised according to their purpose, such as to recount, narrate, express opinion, inform, report and explain. (AC9E1LA03)

Year 2:

Text structure and organisation

• Identify how texts across the curriculum are organised differently and use language features depending on purposes. (AC9E2LA03)

LANGUAGE & LITERACY

Activity: Interview Grug Part 2

What you’ll need: Interview questions from previous task, recording equipment.

*This activity follows on from “Interview Grug Part 1” in the ‘before the show’ section and could also connect with Drama Activity “What a character!”

The students have now read a selection of Grug books and also seen the show. They know a lot about Grug! As a class or in small groups, review the interview questions you created before seeing the show. Do you need to add, change or adapt any of the questions? You are aiming to get Grug to recount some of his experiences and also to share information about his life.

There are a number of ways to complete this task. Choose one or more of the following –

• Set up an interview scenario and take turns interviewing Grug with the interviewer using the set questions. Grug can improvise.
• Write or record Grug’s responses.
• Complete the interview through creating a script or recording the interview in some way (audio, visual).
• Refine and rehearse the interview for live performance in the style of a talk show.
• Students could improvise interviews with other characters from the book or the performance.
• Students could improvise interviews with the director, actors, designers of the show or even the writer of the books.

Content Description

Foundation:

Text structure and organisation

• Understand that texts can take many forms such as signs, books and digital texts. (AC9EFLA03)

Creating Texts

• Create and deliver short spoken texts to report ideas and events to peers, using features of voice such as appropriate volume. (AC9EFLY07)

Year 1:

Text structure and organisation

• Explore how texts are organised according to their purpose, such as to recount, narrate, express opinion, inform, report and explain. (AC9E1LA03)

Creating Texts

• Createand deliver short oral and/or multimodal presentations on personal and learnt topics, which include an opening, middle and concluding statement; some topic-specific vocabulary and appropriate gesture, volume and pace. (AC9E1LY07)

Year 2: 

Text structure and organisation

• Identify how texts across the curriculum are organised differently and use language features depending on purposes. (AC9E2LA03)

Creating Texts

• Create, rehearse and deliver short oral and/or multimodal presentations for familiar audiences and purposes, using text structure appropriate to purpose and topic-specific vocabulary, and varying tone, volume and pace. (AC9E2LY07)

• Literacy
• Critical and creative thinking
• Personal and social capability
• Ethical understanding

Pre-Show Activity

Make a happy face and ask your students to tell you what emotion you are expressing. Strike a pose with your whole body that shows sadness and ask the same question. Explain that our faces and bodies can show other people how we are feeling, and being able to read body language is very helpful in social situations.

Pair up your students and ask them to decide who is A and who is B. A should express an emotion, using their face and body, and B should try to guess. After a few turns, B takes their turn expressing different emotions. If they are confident enough, you could have some students express an emotion for the whole class to guess.

Explain that in drama, we can sometimes create a freeze-frame, or tableau. This is a frozen picture, or photograph, of an event. Put your students into small, mixed ability pairs, and ask them to create tableau for the following situations. After giving them the title, give a few examples of other people that may be in the tableau (other students, teachers, people shopping etc). Allow the groups one minute to get into their characters and hold a freeze. They must be frozen when you finish your countdown from 10.

• A new student starting school
• Someone with no friends on the playground
• A child lost in a supermarket

After showing the rest of the class their freezes, ask the groups to recreate their freezes, but this time, one of the other characters in their tableau is going to show that they are helping the person in need. Give them time to change their pictures, and then share with the rest of the class.

Learning Outcomes

• Explore role and dramatic action in dramatic play, improvisation and process drama (ACADRM027)
• Use voice, facial expression, movement and space to imagine and establish role and situation (ACADRM028)

• Literacy
• Critical and creative thinking
• Personal and social capability
• Ethical understanding
• Intercultural understanding

Post-Show Activity

Have the students discuss how each of the characters in Grug (Grug, Cara the Carpet Snake, Snail, Crab) behaved. Discuss what movements and motions each of the characters displayed, and what each of those things communicated.

Based on these discussions have the students use their bodies to build the characters from the play by walking from one end of the room to the other in character. Ask them to:

• Walk like Grug
• Slither like Cara
• Glide like Snail
• Crawl like Crab

Have the students play with pace, timing and different ranges of motion. Following the activity, have the students discuss how it felt to move in different ways, and what effect this may have had on an audience.

Learning Outcomes

• Explore role and dramatic action in a play, improvisation and process drama ACADRM027.
• Present drama that communicates ideas, including stories from their community, to an audience ACADRM029.

• Literacy
• Critical and creative thinking
• Personal and social capability
• Intercultural understanding

Post-Show Activity

When Grug gets hungry, he grows his food. Exploring underground and creating gardens is a theme from the performance of Grug, in that it helps him solve problems and is an example of resilience.

Get students to research how plants grow and observe plants outside, in their natural environment. Have them list out, or draw, their findings. Discuss these findings as a class.

Following this discussion, work with students to conduct the following experiment that will have them grow a plant of their very own, just like Grug!

Here’s how you grow your plant:

• Each child has a clear plastic cup (or plastic free a glass jar)
• Cut strips of black construction paper (approx. 10cm x 15cm)
• Line the cup or jar with the black paper
• Stuff paper towel into the cup to hold the paper up against the sides
• Next – place 3 to 4 seeds, for example kidney beans, between the black paper and the side of the container
• Water the paper towel
• Keep the paper towel damp, but not flooded
• Put plants in a light sunny position.

Watch and Observe

• The beans wrinkle as the water softens the seed coat
• Sprout
• Grow roots
• Stems

Students are able to watch all of this happening right through the clear container. Have them track the changes and discuss why they think these things are occurring.

Learning Outcomes

Foundation Year

• Science involves observing, asking questions about, and describing changes in, objects and events (ACSHE034)
• Pose and respond to questions, and make predictions about familiar objects and events (ACSIS037)
• Participate in guided investigations to explore and answer questions (ACSIS038)
• Compare observations with those of others (ACSIS041)
• Represent and communicate observations and ideas in a variety of ways (ACSIS042)

Year 1

• Everyday materials can be physically changed in a variety of ways (ACSSU018)
• Science involves observing, asking questions about, and describing changes in, objects and events (ACSHE021)
• Pose and respond to questions, and make predictions about familiar objects and events (ACSIS024)
• Participate in guided investigations to explore and answer questions (ACSIS025)
• Use informal measurements to collect and record observations, using digital technologies as appropriate (ACSIS026)
• Use a range of methods to sort information, including drawings and provided tables and through discussion, compare observations with predictions (ACSIS027)
• Compare observations with those of others (ACSIS213)
• Represent and communicate observations and ideas in a variety of ways (ACSIS029)

Year 2

• Science involves observing, asking questions about, and describing changes in, objects and events (ACSHE034)
• Pose and respond to questions, and make predictions about familiar objects and events (ACSIS037)
• Participate in guided investigations to explore and answer questions (ACSIS038)
• Use informal measurements to collect and record observations, using digital technologies as appropriate (ACSIS039)
• Use a range of methods to sort information, including drawings and provided tables and through discussion, compare observations with predictions (ACSIS040)
• Compare observations with those of others (ACSIS041)
• Represent and communicate observations and ideas in a variety of ways (ACSIS042)

• Critical and creative thinking
• Personal and social capability
• Ethical understanding

Post-show Activity

Activity

Discuss the plants in Grug’s garden – could they see the plants above the ground and the roots underground? Could they see the worm and the home it lived in under the ground?

• Draw an illustration of a plant above the ground and what they think they will see underground using only one colour – BLACK!
• Using only black provides an opportunity to:
• play close attention to the details of shape, line, and texture.
• Appreciate the details in the world around them, as well as their own ability to capture details on paper.

Learning Outcomes

• Use and experiment with different materials, techniques, technologies and processes to make artworks (ACAVAM107)
• Create and display artworks to communicate ideas to an audience (ACAVAM108)
• Create short texts to explore, record and report ideas and events using familiar words and beginning writing

• Literacy
• Critical and creative thinking
• Personal and social capability
• Intercultural understanding

Post-show Activity

Using media of your choosing (paint, collage, clay etc). allow your students to create their own versions of a character from the play. The finished products could accompany any written work that your students complete and be put on display for other classes and parents to see.

Characters from Grug:

• Grug
• Cara the Carpet Snake
• Snail
• Crab

Learning Outcomes

• Use and experiment with different materials, techniques, technologies and processes to make artworks (ACAVAM107)
• Create and display artworks to communicate ideas to an audience (ACAVAM108)
• Create short texts to explore, record and report ideas and events using familiar words and beginning writing

Post-show Activity

Activity

Do the Grug

Students can be encouraged to do the Grug to warm up their bodies and test their memory of the show. Students should then be encouraged to create their own signature dance either individually or in groups. These dance(s) can be presented to the class.

These dances can be used as warm-ups or ‘brain-breaks’ for your class throughout the term.

Learning Outcomes

Foundation Year

• Practise personal and social skills to interact with and include
  others (ACPPS004)
• Participate in games with and without equipment (ACPMP009)
• Cooperate with others when participating in physical activities (ACPMP012)
• Follow rules when participating in physical activities (ACPMP014)

Year 1-2

• Describe ways to include others to make them feel that they
  belong (ACPPS019)
• Identify and practise emotional responses that account for own and
  others’ feelings (ACPPS020)
• Create and participate in games (ACPMP027)
• Use strategies to work in group situations when participating in physical activities (ACPMP030)
• Identify rules and play fairly when participating in physical activities (ACPMP032)

• Numeracy
• Critical and creative thinking
• Personal and social capability