Activity 7 – Excitable Edgar (John Lewis) – any year group with appropriate adaptation

Continuing the theme of Christmas ads, John Lewis (and Waitrose) have done it again with their delightful Excitable Edgar ad. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should watch it now.

As with last year’s Moz (also worth another look as most of these ideas hold good for that too), there is no dialogue in this advert which makes it ideal for linking media literacy with literacy. It’s really rich in visual clues especially through the expressions on the characters’ faces (real and animated) which give real insight into their thoughts and feelings.

You could start by “boxing it up” again, break it down into sections, how does the story build. Snapshot key moments from the film (either as a class on the whiteboard or in pairs on the children’s iPads). As a class have a go at constructing the narrative (use the pictures for vocabulary). Book Creator would be great for building a story book from the pictures, no sound this time just a written narrative.

I could go on, but I won’t because as I sat down to write this this morning an email dropped into my inbox: Mr P (Lee Parkinson) has already done it in what looks like considerable detail. You can get his comprehension questions for free via the link above and sacrificing your email address. Subscribe to his resources and there is enough planning to keep you going with a unit of work lasting several weeks. The suggestions are there for free.

I would suggest that you then go along to John Lewis and buy the dragon toy so that you can bring Edgar into your school using green screen in iMovie, but as I expected they are sold out. We’ll just have to be quicker next year!