More Mr Men and Little Misses

January 6th, 2010 · 16 Comments

Here is the end product of a lesson plan in which a group of adult learners created their own Mr Men and Little Miss characters:

The artists were: Ana, Carlos, Elena, Eva, Inés, Juana, Marián, Marta, Pilar, Silvia, Silvia and Verónica. As well as making a drawings of their character, everyone had to write a short story or description. After correcting the stories/descriptions, the next stage was to put the pictures up around the classroom walls. Each student then read out their story without mentioning the name of their character:

This Mr Man is very dangerous. He is the owner of the city. But no one can trust him. Get on the wrong side of him and he will send one of his hit men to ‘take care’ of you. Don’t mess with this Mr Man, unless you want to come to a nasty end!

Other students had to guess the character (in this case, Mr Dodgy).

[NB All adjectives came from the students themselves by the way via a peer teaching game. I will post that some time soon.]

Tags: Adjectives · Lesson plans · Student drawings

16 responses so far ↓

1 Anita Kwiatkowska // Jan 7, 2010 at 6:18 am

I love this activity!

Bit disappointed that nobody chose Little Miss Bossy though…
2 Janet Bianchini // Jan 7, 2010 at 8:11 am

Great fun activity and very creative! I love the drawings.
3 admin // Jan 7, 2010 at 11:16 am

Sorry about that Anita.
Little Miss Bossy already existed (but I think you already knew that!)

http://www.amazon.com/Little-Miss-Bossy-Mr-Men/dp/0843174234/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262858831&sr=1-1

=)
4 admin // Jan 7, 2010 at 11:19 am

Thanks Janet
Yeah I really liked the results. You can imagine that it was one of those classes with lots of laughing.
I will have to post the full lesson plan sometime.
5 Laine // Jan 7, 2010 at 6:01 pm

Ha, brilliant! I love ‘Mr and Mrs Hasty’.
6 admin // Jan 7, 2010 at 6:24 pm

They’re great aren’t they?
Unfortunately, I hear that things aren’t going too well in the Hasty household. Arguments between the couple are becoming more frequent and of a more serious nature. It’s a great shame. But well, what can we expect?
Jamie =)
7 Mike Harrison // Jan 8, 2010 at 1:12 pm

This is great! I think it probably requires you to have a fun group of students who don’t mind doing something that might look/feel a bit ’silly’. Does it help doing it with a monolingual group? (I’m assuming the group above would be Spanish-speakers). I would also be interested in how you introduced the topic of Mr Men. Did you use the website you mentioned on an earlier post (Ana’s students - http://www.jamiekeddie.com/533)?
Wish I had students I thought could do this. I asked my students to guess why a man in a picture looked unhappy. Puzzled as to a lack of them speaking afterwards, I quizzed one of them. She said that they weren’t saying anything as they didn’t know the right answer! Give me strength!!
8 admin // Jan 8, 2010 at 1:45 pm

Hello Mike
Good to see you here. Thanks for the comment.
You’re right that it does help to have a fun group for this type of activity. I have had students before that it almost certainly wouldn’t work with.

You are right that the artists were all Spanish but I don’t think it would be necessary to have a monolingual class to make it work. Did you see the original Mr Man lesson plan that I posted before? This is how I introduced them to the Mr Men as well ‘2-syllable adjectives that end in -y’.

http://www.jamiekeddie.com/476

After that activity, we played a peer teaching game in which students had to rack their brains for other adjectives of similar structure. The students were at advanced level. That is why we got words like ‘kinky’ and ‘baggy’. The adjectives that came up are the ones that we used for the above drawings. Actually, I will have to post the detailed procedure for that game sometime soon as it’s quite good fun.

By the way, I know exactly what you mean about having students that won’t talk. I used to feel bad about that - as if it was my fault. But I don’t any more. There’s only so much we can do as teachers.

Thanks again Mike
Jamie =)
9 John Brezinsky // Jan 11, 2010 at 9:17 pm

Jamie this is a great activity. I especially like that you’re using these characters over more than one exercise. I always liked using these kinds of activities for one of the same reasons I like role plays–since the discussion of a Mr Men/Little Miss character is so far removed from seriousness, students can go out on more of a limb without running as much of a risk. I found that there was less fear of making mistakes if it was about something silly. You clearly have a good group based on the characters that they invented. Well done!
10 admin // Jan 12, 2010 at 3:16 pm

Hello John
Thanks for the comment
That’s a really interesting way of putting it. At last - a serious reason for using non-serious stuff! I will quote you on that one day.
Jamie
11 Vicki Hollett // Jan 16, 2010 at 11:02 pm

Oh Jamie, what a terrific lesson. Ha! Can’t wait to find a clas to try it with. Thank you for sharing this.
12 admin // Jan 17, 2010 at 1:25 pm

Hello Vicky
I would love to see the results.
Hope you will send them my way.
Jamie =)
13 Matt Ledding // Mar 22, 2010 at 5:45 pm

Hey Jamie, these pics would be fun to animate via crazytalk… am still looking for the “free version” versus trial.

here is a “visual math” video I thought was purdy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkGeOWYOFoA&feature=player_embedded
14 admin // Mar 24, 2010 at 5:11 pm

Hey Matt
Thanks for that. Do let me know when you find the free version. That is the application you mentioned in my talk on YouTube right?
Love the video. That’s what YouTube is all about!
Jamie =)
15 Little Miss // Apr 6, 2010 at 8:16 pm

These are great! Good idea!
16 scott byers // Jun 20, 2010 at 4:15 pm

How do you send your own mr and little miss creations into a official website,or which website do you send them to? Please reply to (battyboy_1989@hotmail.com) as, i have designed my own little miss character and would like for it to be seen and mayb used.