Frank’s Red Hat

Connecting to prior knowledge

At the beginning of the unit, activate students’ potential prior knowledge about Antarctica. Ask them to work in groups to discuss their knowledge of Antarctica, then write/draw their thinking with markers on large sheets of paper. Before setting students to work, prompt their knowledge and skills for interacting with others, such as actively listening, extending own ideas, responding to opinions, and giving instructions. Once they have finished, ask the groups to present their thinking to the whole class. This will help you to assess students’ knowledge of Antarctica, the questions they have, and how much knowledge you will need to build in the next experience.

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Explain to students that they will be reading a story set in Antarctica. Before they do, they need to find out information about Antarctica’s environment, climate, and fauna. Introduce students to non-fiction texts about Antarctica to build their knowledge, including print and digital/multimedia texts (see More Resources for suggestions). As you introduce these texts, explain their navigation and the features that help the author/producer convey information. Focus on information about Antarctica’s environment, climate, and fauna. Begin to build a word wall of relevant vocabulary (e.g. fauna, climate, penguin, seal, etc.).

As an optional extension, you could invite someone who has visited Antarctica into the classroom (face to face or via video conference) so students can learn from their experiences and ask questions.

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To prepare students for the visual features of Frank’s Red Hat, display images of Antarctica on the interactive whiteboard. Ask students what colours they see and why they think those colours are present. Ask them to consider the changes in colours between the natural environment and when humans enter the environment. Explain that this understanding of colour in the environment will assist them to engage with the text.

Exploring the text in context of our community, school, and ‘me’

Before reading Frank’s Red Hat, re-activate students’ prior knowledge by reviewing the information explored in the previous experiences. Show students the front cover, read the title and author, and ask them what they notice about the images on the cover. Draw their attention to the mostly monochrome colour pallet, aside from the word ‘RED’ and the red hat. Ask students what the colours might suggest about the story; explain that it might explore themes of diversity, or that the hat might be unfamiliar for this group of penguins. Ask students to turn and talk about a time when they might have seen something they felt uncertain about.

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Introduce students to the terms ‘diversity’, ‘perseverance’, and ‘determination’ and discuss their meanings. Read Frank’s Red Hat and connect the themes to students’ own lives. Prompts that could be used with students include:

• Frank really liked his red hat. Describe a time when you liked something that was special to you.
• The other penguins were nervous about Frank’s red hat. Describe a time that you felt nervous about something that was new to you.
• How do you think Frank felt when the penguins moved away from him because of his hat?
• Frank kept trying to make hats in different colours to convince the other penguins of his idea. Describe a time when you had an idea that didn’t go as expected and how you persevered. What was the outcome?

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NOTE: For the purpose of tracking page numbers, the first page of the story is considered p. 1.

Colour is an important visual element in Frank’s Red Hat. Turn to the pages displaying the collection of hats with their colour labels (pp. 17–18) and discuss the different colours presented. Create a classroom colour wheel with these colours for use in the next task. You could use markers, paint, or watercolour paints on paper.

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Rich assessment task

Students have begun to consider the theme of diversity as they’ve engaged with Frank’s Red Hat. To demonstrate their understanding of this theme, ask students to create their own hats that represent who they are. As part of this process, explore the visual arts materials they can access, which might include paper, textiles, scissors, glue, sticky tape, staplers, etc. Ask students to begin by drawing and labelling their hat design. They can then explain their design choices to a partner, including colour (drawing on the colour wheel from the previous experience), shape, size, and other design features.

Provide time for students to use the visual arts materials to create their hat. When finished, the class might organise a hat parade where they can show off their hats and explain how their hats represent them. They might also produce a written response explaining how the hat represents them, to be displayed alongside their earlier design.

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Responding to the text

Re-read Frank’s Red Hat to the class. Display the endpapers.

Revisit the themes of diversity, perseverance, and determination explored in previous learning experiences. Explain that these themes are common to many stories. Read Stuck by Oliver Jeffers and model your own thinking about the connection between the themes in the two texts (text-to-text connections). For example, you could draw students’ attention to the determination and persistence Floyd showed as he used each object to try to retrieve his kite from the tree. Then explain the similarities to Frank’s determination and persistence with his hats.

Next, place students in small groups (3–4 students) with a copy of Frank’s Red Hat AND a copy of another text with themes of diversity, perseverance, and determination. Examples include:

• Stuck by Oliver Jeffers
• The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds
• Jabari Jumps by Gaia Conwell
• Our Little Inventor* by Sher Rill Ng
• Sam and Dave Dig a Hole by Mac Barnett, illus. Jon Klassen
• Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beaty, illus. David Roberts
• Be You by Peter H. Reynolds
• Just One Bee* by Margrete Lamond and Anthony Bertini, illus. Christopher Nielsen

* Reading Australia title

Ask students to find and discuss the connections between the themes in the texts. Also ask them to discuss the differences in the ways the authors have used characters, settings, and plots to explore those themes. Students could write their text-to-text connections on sticky notes as they discuss, OR – following their discussion – they could write a response or film themselves providing an oral response. If they provide a video response, these could be showcased on the interactive whiteboard and reflected on as a class.

There is also a sub-theme of cause and effect in Frank’s Red Hat. To explore this sub-theme, draw students’ attention to the pages where Neville tries on the hat (pp. 8–14). Explain that the penguins think that trying on the hat led to Neville being eaten by the killer whale. Ask what students think of the accuracy of that cause and effect. Provide other cause and effect scenarios and ask students to respond with ‘true’ or ‘false’ (perhaps thumbs up for ‘true’ and thumbs down for ‘false’). For example:

• If I wear blue shoes and win a running race, does that mean that I will always win running races if I wear blue shoes?
• If I’m riding my bike and I fall off and hurt myself, does that mean I will always hurt myself when I ride my bike?

NOTE: You can assure students that Neville escapes the killer whale unharmed – his story continues in the companion book, Neville’s Great Escape!

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Exploring plot, character, setting, and theme

Re-read Frank’s Red Hat and discuss the way the author and illustrator, Sean E. Avery, has introduced the setting and each character through the written text and images. Ask students to identify specific examples from the text to support their thinking. Explain that the author/illustrator has presented characters with different perspectives about Frank’s ideas. Draw up a table like the one below and discuss the perspectives of each character. In one column record students’ thinking about that character’s perspective, and in another column record the evidence from the words and images that show how the author/illustrator has conveyed that perspective.

Next, place students in small groups (3–4 students) with a copy of Frank’s Red Hat, cut outs of speech and thought bubbles (PDF, 66KB), and blu tack. Alternatively, you could purchase sticky notes in the shape of speech and thought bubbles. Have students record additional thinking and dialogue for the characters and stick them in the book. When finished, ask students to share their work with another group and compare their thinking about the characters’ perspectives.

If students don’t mention it, ask them to focus on the final page (p. 29) where there is a vector (line) between the walrus’ eye and the snowman’s nose. Encourage students to look around the page and see if they can infer what the walrus is thinking and what might happen next.

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Rich assessment task

Ask students to choose a character from Frank’s Red Hat other than Frank, and draw that character on paper using visual arts materials (e.g. pencils, markers, crayons). Use a digital puppet resource such as ChatterPix to capture the drawing as a digital image and turn it into a digital puppet. Have students record the character verbally recounting their experience with Frank, drawing on the perspectives explored in the previous task. Students might find it helpful to write a script for their response to assist with the recording.

Alternatively, students could make physical puppets using paper and/or textiles on popsicle sticks and present their character’s response to the class or small groups.

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Examining text structure and organisation

Sean E. Avery uses unique visual techniques and a range of media to produce images. View ‘Author Sean E Avery’s Digital Artwork Process’ on the interactive whiteboard as a class, and discuss the media and techniques he used. Points for discussion include:

• Foregrounding and backgrounding as a key visual element, and the layering of images and textures
• Materials used, including paper, different paints and brushes, markers, and tissue paper
• Use of a textures board, and the way the different textures are cut up and arranged on the page

Explain that while Avery has converted his materials to a digital platform, similar effects can be achieved on paper.

Provide time and materials for students to explore some of Avery’s visual techniques. Offer prompting and feedback to students about their creation of textures and their use of foregrounding and backgrounding.

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Frank’s Red Hat has a unique narrative structure that goes beyond orientation, complication, and resolution. As a whole class, explore the narrative structure used in Frank’s Red Hat. Begin by re-reading the text and adding a written summary and image for each part to a storyboard on the interactive whiteboard. When finished, revisit each part of the story and assign labels to the structure (e.g. orientation to the character, sample of the broader complication, etc.).

Explain to students that different narratives use different structures to meet their purposes. Organise students in their small groups from the text-to-text connections experience (Responding > Responding to the Text) with the additional text they used. Ask them to create a storyboard (PDF, 44KB) for this text and assign labels for each part of the story, plotting the structure with an orientation to main character, orientation to setting, the number of complications and partial resolutions, etc. Ask students to compare the structure of their text to the structure of Frank’s Red Hat.

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Examining grammar and vocabulary

Explain to the class that they will be exploring the noun groups used in Frank’s Red Hat by identifying the characters, settings, and ‘things’ in the written text.

Provide an example using p. 4 of the story (‘Frank wore a red hat’). Discuss the nouns in the sentence: ‘Frank’ (proper noun with capital letter) and ‘a red hat’ (noun group). This page also contains another noun group: ‘the other penguins’. Write both noun groups on the board and ask students to discuss their structure:

• Both start with an article (‘a’, ‘the’)
• Both have the main ‘thing’ at the end (‘hat’, ‘penguins’)
• Both have a descriptive word in the middle of the noun group (‘red’, ‘other’)
• ‘Hat’ is singular, ‘penguins’ is plural

Assign students to groups. Ask them to find the noun groups on specific pages (see below) and discuss the structure of each noun group.

Then read the rest of the text and ask students to identify the nouns (e.g. ‘penguin’, ‘hat’, ‘world’, ‘rocks’, ‘snow’). As they do, explore the surrounding words and consider which words form the noun group, then write a list of these noun groups on the board. When finished, ask students what they notice about the noun groups. Explain that most characters have an article and noun (e.g. ‘the seals’). Many of these noun groups do not have descriptive words. Explain that this could be because the images provide a description of the characters.

Ask students:

What if this story didn’t have images? What would we need to do to the noun groups to build up the description for the reader?

Model building up the noun group with descriptive words using one of the examples from your list. Explain that the aim is to build an image of the character in that moment. Then ask students to work in pairs and choose TWO other noun groups from the list, adding descriptive words to ensure the reader can create a picture in their mind. When finished, ask each pair to share their new noun groups with another pair.

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Rich assessment task

Ask students to use visual arts materials (preferably some of the same materials from the earlier experience with Avery’s techniques) to recreate their favourite scene from the book. As students create their visual text, prompt them by asking which elements of visual design they are using and how. Once they create their visual text, ask students to write a description of what’s happening in the scene, drawing on their learning about expanded noun groups and description. Ask students to share their text with a partner, explaining the visual elements in the image, identifying the noun group, and explaining their word choice.

These pages could be displayed in the classroom or compiled into a book for your classroom library.

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For the final sequence of learning experiences, students will draw on their learning from the earlier parts of the unit to work towards producing their own picture book. Their picture book will incorporate themes of diversity, perseverance, and determination, and will be set in an environment other than Antarctica (e.g. jungle, ocean, Australian outback). Students will move through a sequence of researching their chosen setting, planning their text, drafting the written text, and sketching images. Finally, for the Rich Assessment Task, they will publish their text as a picture book.

Begin by modelling ways to research a chosen environment. For example, you might choose to set your modelled text in the Amazon rainforest, or perhaps an environment connected with a unit of work for another curriculum area.

Demonstrate ways to research this setting using books and online sources (e.g. websites and multimedia clips). Explain the navigation of information texts (including the contents and index) and how to scan pages for relevant information.

Ensure that your classroom has a collection of non-fiction texts about different environments that students can draw from. Also demonstrate online searches and how to determine the relevance of information, navigate websites, and take notes as information emerges. Ask students to begin researching their chosen environment and make notes about key information. Perhaps they could start sketching to experiment with what the setting will look like, as well as the characters for their story. Ensure that the websites being accessed are appropriate and safe for student use (e.g. searching for information through Kiddle).

Next, model planning your story using a storyboard (PDF, 44KB). Demonstrate your thinking about the text structure and draw your storyboard with captions. Ask students to complete their own storyboards, giving consideration to the structure they will use for their text and the way their characters, setting, and themes will be incorporated. If students find this step challenging, encourage them to follow a similar structure to Frank’s Red Hat and innovate on the story (e.g. a fish in the ocean decides to invent something that the other fish are unsure about).

Once the stories have been planned, model your own drafting process, which will involve the written text and sketches of the images. After this, provide students with extended time to draft the pages of their picture book, including the written text and rough sketches of their images. During this process, they should consider the materials needed for their images, as well as their front and back cover design and title page. As they plan their images and materials, prompt students to incorporate the techniques and elements of visual design showcased in Frank’s Red Hat.

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Rich assessment task

As the culminating experience for this unit, students will publish their text as a picture book. Each page could be produced on paper with markers and/or other visual arts materials, then bound, stapled, or inserted into a display folder. This is an opportunity for students to demonstrate the techniques and concepts learned across the unit, including visual techniques; knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, and text structures; and the themes of diversity, perseverance, and determination. You might produce your own published picture book as an example.

Alternatively, students could use a digital resource such as Book Creator to publish their picture books (ensure that they have been taught to use this resource beforehand). Using this method, they could also incorporate photographs and digitally sourced images.

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