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

Activity

Have a number of books based on friendship available in your reading area. Read some as a class and discuss the central themes of the books. These books can include Grug.

Have the students discuss the different themes and ideas expressed in each of the stories and chart their responses.

Have the students create their own story of friendship using a variety of media.

Learning Outcomes

Foundation Year

• Literature and Context
  Recognise that texts are created by authors who tell stories and share experiences that may be similar or different to students’ own experiences (ACELT1575)
• Interacting with others
  Listen to and respond orally to texts and to the communication of others in informal and structured classroom situations (ACELY1646)
• Examining literature
  Identify some features of texts including events and characters and retell events from a text (ACELT1578)

Year 1

• Literature and context
  Discuss how authors create characters using language and images (ACELT1581)
• Interacting with others
  Engage in conversations and discussions, using active listening behaviours, showing interest, and contributing ideas, information and questions (ACELY1656)
• Examining literature
  Discuss features of plot, character and setting in different types of literature and explore some features of characters in different texts (ACELT1584)

Year 2

• Literature and context
  Discuss how depictions of characters in print, sound and images reflect the contexts in which they were created (ACELT1587)
• Interacting with others
  Listen for specific purposes and information, including instructions, and extend students’ own and others’ ideas in discussions (ACELY1666)
• Examining literature
  Discuss the characters and settings of different texts and explore how language is used to present these features in different ways (ACELT1591)

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

Post-Show Activities

Activity

Discuss Grug with your students and record their responses. What were their favourite parts of the show? Who were their favourite characters? Why?

Ask your students to write a summary of their trip to the theatre. Depending on ability, their report could include pictures and key words, phrases, or more complex sentences. When their written reports are completed, give each student the chance to present their summary to the class.

Learning Outcomes

Foundation Year

• Retell familiar literary texts through performance, use of illustrations and images (ACELT1580)
• Use interaction skills including listening while others speak, using appropriate voice levels, articulation and body language, gestures and eye contact (ACELY1784)
• Deliver short oral presentations to peers (ACELY1647)
• Create short texts to explore, record and report ideas and events using familiar words and beginning writing knowledge (ACELY1651)

Year 1

• Use interaction skills including turn-taking, recognising the contributions of others, speaking clearly and using appropriate volume and pace (ACELY1788)
• Make short presentations using some introduced text structures and language, for example opening statements (ACELY1657)
• Create short imaginative and informative texts that show emerging use of appropriate text structure, sentence-level grammar, word choice, spelling, punctuation and appropriate multimodal elements, for example illustrations and diagrams (ACELY1661)

Year 2

• Understand that different types of texts have identifiable text structures and language features that help the text serve its purpose (ACELA1463)
• Rehearse and deliver short presentations on familiar and new topics (ACELY1667)
• Create short imaginative, informative and persuasive texts using growing knowledge of text structures and language features for familiar and some less familiar audiences, selecting print and multimodal elements appropriate to the audience and purpose (ACELY1671)

• 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