Northern Lights - Lyra's Developing Character!

This engaging and informative lesson enables students to understand how the lead protagonist of Philip Pullmans’s Northern Lights, Lyra, develops as a character and as a heroine throughout the narrative. In doing so, students learn the key features of heroes and heroines, and apply these to the different behaviours that Lyra exhibits over the course of the novel. They then go on to design their own hero/heroine development storyboards!

The lesson follows a step-by-step learning journey, in which children learn through:

-Defining what heroes and heroines are, and identifying their key features;
-Comprehending how Lyra is initially introduced to the reader, using an extract from the text;
-Tracking Lyra’s development as a hero over the course of the novel, using a development graph and justification table;
-Creating a storyboard for their own heroic journey, using the template provided;
Self assessing their learning attempts.

Included is:
Whole lesson PowerPoint - colourful and comprehensive;
Extract from Chapter 1 of Northern Lights;
Lyra’s development tracking template;
Create your own Bildungsroman novel storyboard template;
Comprehensive lesson plan.

All resources are provided in Word (for easy editing) and PDF (to ensure formatting remains fixed between different computers).
There are also opportunities for group learning, speaking and listening, peer assessment, and whole class discussion. I originally used these resources with year 7/8 classes, however colleagues have used them for between years 5 and 10 with some adaptations.

All images are licensed for commercial use, and image rights are listed on the last page of the presentation.