Understanding characters

Watch the following videos. In each of the videos, the character involved has a quality that is shown to the audience. Think of what this quality is and write descriptions that show this quality. 

Create a Google document and share it among your group. Each group will work on one video. 


1. "IT Crowd" - Roy 

2. "Mean Streets" - Johnny Boy

3. "Kindergarten Cop" - John Kimbell


Sample format

Quality



Appearance



Actions



Speech



Attitudes towards others









Read the following passages adapted from "Shadow" by Michael Morpurgo.

Choose either passage 1 or 2 to elaborate more on the story - more showing, less telling. 

Create a Google document, create two columns.

Copy and paste the passage into both columns. Edit the passage in the right side column to show more details.




Show more, tell less model passage

As we came closer to Kabul, the road was busier than it had been, with trucks and army vehicles and carts. The donkey was nervous in the traffic, so Mother and I were walking. Then we saw ahead of us the police checkpoint. She reached for my hand, clutched it and did not let go. She kept telling me not to be frightened, that it would be all right, God willing. But I knew she was telling herself that more than she was telling me.

As we reached the barrier the police started shouting at the dog, swearing at her, then throwing stones at her. One of the stones hit her, and she ran off, yelping in pain. That made me really angry, angry enough to be brave. I found myself swearing back at them, and telling them exactly what I thought of them, what everyone thought of the police. They were all around us then, like angry bees, shouting at us, calling us filthy Hazara dogs, threatening us with their rifles.

Then – and I couldn’t believe it at first – the dog came back. She was so brave. She just went for them, snarling and barking, and she managed to bite one of them on the leg too, before they kicked her away. Then they were shooting at her. This time when she ran away, she did not come back. After that, they took us off behind their hut, pushed us up against the wall and demanded to see our ID papers. I thought they were going to shoot us, they were that angry.

They told Mother our papers were like us, no good, that we couldn’t have them back unless we handed over our money. Mother refused. So they searched us both, roughly, and disrespectfully too. They found nothing, of course.

But then they searched the mattress.

They cut it open and found the money and Grandmother’s jewellery. The policemen laughed out loud in triumph and shared out Uncle Mir’s money and Grandmother’s jewellery there and then, right in front of our eyes. They took what food we had left and even our water.

One of them, the officer in charge I think he was, handed me back the empty envelope and our papers. Then, with a sarcastic grin all over his horrible face, he dropped a couple of coins into my hand.

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Practice passage 1:

The old couple from Kabul never said very much, but they kept our spirits up. That was something we all wanted to believe and that was why we believed it, I suppose. This old couple, they took quite a liking to me, they said, because I reminded them of their son when he was little. In fact, everyone looked out for me. I’ve thought a lot about why they were all so good to me. I think they did not want to see another child die.

In a way, I became everyone’s son on that journey.

I knew, because everyone was worried about it, and talked about it all the time, that the most dangerous part of the journey was going to be the last bit, getting across the English Channel. The only way across was to hide away in a truck, I was told, and hope not to be caught. But lots of people were caught.

Mother was terrified of being caught. It worried her all the time. It was around this time that she had her first panic attack. In a way, it was her panic attack that saved us. The old couple from Kabul calmed her down. I think that was why they chose us, because of Mother’s panic attack, and because I reminded them of their son, maybe.

I remember Mother was terrified the night we escaped from the refugee camp. I was excited. All four of us together, the old couple from Kabul and us.

Then we came down a track and out onto a little road. Only minutes later this car came along, pulling a trailer. The driver turned out to be the son of the old couple, the one who was now living in England and who was like me when he was little. It was all so quick. He helped all four of us up into the trailer and made us crawl in under the bed, where we all squeezed in together. Then the door was shut on us and we heard it lock. “If we are lucky,” said the old man, “we will be in England in a couple of hours, maybe less. No one must talk, not a word.”

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Practice passage 2:

I thought it was Uncle Mir at first. Only a few days before we'd had a pipe that burst in our flat and the water had flooded down through the floor into their place. i thought it must have happened again. So I got out of bed to open the door.

It was men in uniform, policemen, some of them were, or immigration officers maybe – I didn’t know – but lots of them, ten maybe twelve.

They pushed past me and charged up the stairs. Then one of them had me by the arm and was dragging me upstairs. I found Mother sitting up in her bed. I could see she was finding it hard to breaths and that any minute she’d be having one of her panic attacks. A policewoman was telling her to get dressed, but she didn’t move.

When I asked what was going on, they just told me to shut up. Then they were shouting at Mother, telling her we had five minutes to get ready, that we were illegal asylum seekers, that they were going to take us to a detention centre, and then we’d be going back to Afghanistan. That was when I suddenly became more angry than frightened. I shouted at them.

Then they got really mad. One of them pushed me out of Mother’s room, and back into my bedroom, and told me to get dressed.

They never left us alone after that.

They hardly let us take anything with us – one small rucksack and my schoolbag, that’s all. 

They never stopped hassling us. They took us down the stairs and out into the street. They were lots of people out there in their dressing gowns, watching us – Uncle Mir and Matt and Flat Stanley too. 

A policeman had me by the arm the whole time, pushing me, frog-marching me. It made me feel ashamed and I had nothing to be ashamed about. Mother was having a proper fit by now, but they didn’t bother. The policewoman said she was just pretending, putting it on.