Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

	Part A: The Lorax
30 minutes	Part B: What Is My Story?
50 minutes	Part C: Illustrating Your Dream Car and Entering the Contest
10 minutes	Reflection

Part A: The Lorax

Step 1.

Begin this lesson by reading The Lorax by Dr Seuss to students, allowing students to see the pictures.

Step 2.

Once complete, invite students to reflect on the story, firstly by responding to the following questions through a class discussion:

What was this story about?
What do you notice about the way this story is written? For example, does the author use complete sentences or does he use rhyming?
What other writing techniques does the author use to engage the reader and to make the reading enjoyable? Can you find any examples of alliteration or onomatopoeic words?
How is this story similar to other stories you've read or heard, either in books or in the real world? (For example, have you heard about people in the real world who might be speaking out for our environment?)
How does this story make you think about our environment?

Step 3.

Explain to students that they are now going to work in pairs or small groups to analyse how the author has used images to enhance the story, meaning that the images have been created to make the story more interesting or powerful or engaging.

Break the class into groups and give each student a copy of the Student Worksheet and each group a copy of The Lorax. Invite students to navigate to the pages listed on the Student Worksheet and to discuss their answers to the questions in their groups. Students can then record their answers, with each student writing their own answers in their own words.

Once complete, invite students to share their answers with the class. Check for clarity of understanding around:

The way words are used to create the setting and atmosphere
The way images are used to enhance the reader's experience of the text.

Part B: What Is My Story?

Step 1.

Explain to students that they will now answer the following questions:

How does this story relate to what you think and feel about our environment? For example, whose side are you on in this story; the Once-ler’s or the Lorax and why?
How would you feel if this story was happening in your local area?

Now, pose the following question, and record students' answers on the board:

What parts of the environment in your local area do you think are special? For example, is there a local park or creek or beach that is special? Or some trees that are a bit magical? Or some native animals that are particularly interesting or important?

Step 2.

OPTIONAL - Explain to students that they are now going to make up some words in the style of Dr Seuss to describe some of these important features, using your list of special environmental features. You could work as a class to come up with these words or break the class into pairs or small groups. Make a record of all suggestions on the board.

Step 3.

Now, explain to students that they are going to imagine that there is some threat to their local environment, like the Once-ler chopping all the trees down. If necessary, explain to students that there are actually many threats to our environment, including:

Pollution – where waste in the air, water, soil, and sea can harm plants and animals.
Droughts – when it doesn’t rain for a long time, plants and animals can find it harder to stay healthy.
Bushfire – bushfires can harm living things.
Development – where cities and towns grow and begin moving into areas where plants and animals are living.
Pest plants and animals – where animals and plants from other places (like foxes, crown-of-thorn starfish or blackberries) take over an area, making it harder for the native plants and animals to stay healthy.

Where possible, highlight a threat in your local area that is affecting or could affect your local environment.

Step 4.

Students are to imagine that they are like the Lorax and the threat is like the Once-ler, but instead of the Lorax only having his voice and his hands to help him, students will have a car of their dreams – a dream car. This car will have tools and equipment (but not weapons) to help care for the parts of the environment that are under threat.

Students will need to create a short story about how this car is helping our environment. The story should:

Explain which part of their local environment students are focusing on (encourage students to choose something that they are interested in or that they think is important, like a particular animal that visits their yard or the pollution on their local beach)
Explain how they and their dream car will look after this part of the environment, including any special features, tools and equipment the car might have
Think about what the mood of the story is and how they can convey this through the words that they choose
Be limited to 10 to 15 sentences (depending on age and ability)
Optional – If students have thought up new words for the environmental features in your area, they should incorporate some into their story
Differentiation – Depending on age or ability, you could also encourage students to try and write their story in the Dr. Seuss rhyming style.

Allow time for students to plan and write their stories. As they write, move around the classroom checking on students' progress and offering support where necessary. As students work, you could pose the following questions as stimulus:

What features will your dream car have?
What will your dream car be able to do?
How will the dream car help you look after our environment?

Encourage students to dream big!

Step 5.

Once complete, invite students to team up with a classmate to share their stories. Students should provide feedback on each other’s stories, remembering to be kind, helpful and specific when providing feedback:

Part C: Illustrating Your Dream Car and Entering the Contest

Step 1.

Explain to students that they will create an illustration of their dream car (this could be the cover art for their stories). Once complete, this artwork will be submitted to the Toyota Dream Car Art Contest.

Spend a few moments discussing the process of submitting their artworks and the prizes that might be won.

Explain the following contest rules for creating your dream car:

You must create your dream car artwork by yourself (no working with a friend or in a group).
Your dream car must be hand-created using things like pencils, pens/markers, crayons, paints, etc. It can’t be made using collage or a computer/digital device.
It must be drawn on an A3 piece of paper (or smaller). You might like to use this Toyota Dream Car Drawing Template.
Find the contest entry information here (including dates, prizes and full terms and conditions).

Step 2.

You could also work with students to view some of the previous year’s finalists to Toyota Dream Car Art Contest. As you view these artworks, invite students to consider:

What do you notice about this artwork?
What are the best things about this artwork?
Have any of these dream cars been created to help parts of our environment?
What features of the cars in these artworks do you like the best and why?

Viewing these previous Toyota Dream Car Art Contest may inspire new ideas in students. Provide some time for students to amend their stories.

Step 3.

Invite each student to create a draft version of their dream car illustration. Students should be encouraged to create their illustrations in the style of the illustrations in The Lorax; for example, using lots of curved lines and unusual imagery. In addition, students need to think about what colours they will choose to help create the mood of the illustration (remembering the pages of The Lorax analysed earlier in the lesson).

Give students a set amount of time to create their draft and emphasise that perfection is not important at this stage: instead, it is more important to have fun and to create the car of your dreams that will help you take care of our environment!

Depending on time, you could also encourage students to experiment with different colouring or painting techniques and mediums, such as:

Techniques - pointillism, hatching or shading
Mediums – pencils, marker pens, acrylic paints, watercolour paints or pencils, crayons, pastels, etc.

Invite students to think about what techniques and mediums appear to have been used in The Lorax.

As students create their drafts, move around the room to offer support or suggestions on what techniques or mediums might be best suited to their illustrations.

You could invite students to share their drafts with other students in order to give and receive feedback. This feedback could be noted and incorporated into the final drafts.

Step 4.

Once students are happy with their first draft, invite them to create the final version of their dream car artwork on A3 paper.

Step 5.

As part of their entry, students are required to write a statement in response to the following: “Please explain the idea behind ‘Your Dream Car’ artwork”.

Ask students to create a draft version of their response, ensuring that they focus on being clear and brief and that they have explained what their car will do and how it will do it.

Again, invite students to share their statements with another student to seek feedback, and to check spelling and grammar.

Finally, have students scan or take a clear photograph of each entry and submit all entries using the online entry form.

Important! Students (or yourself) will need to hang onto their artworks after entering in order to be eligible to win prizes and have their artwork showcased.

Reflection

Invite students to work independently to answer the following questions (also available on the Student Worksheet):

Why is it important to look after our local environment?
Without a dream car to help us, we need to use our voices and hands to help our local environment, just like the Lorax. What is one thing I can do with my hands to help my local environment?
What is one thing I can do with my voice?
What part of my dream car do I like the most and why? What are its best features?
What part of my artwork am I most proud of? (Think of technique, choice of medium, colours, etc.)

Teacher Reflection

Take this opportunity to reflect on your own teaching:

What did you learn about your teaching today?
What worked well?
What didn't work so well?
What would you share?
Where to next?
How are you going to get there?

Toyota Dream Car Art Contest - Illustrating a Short Story

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