A Guide to the Truth about Trolls

Learning intention: 

I am learning to plan in a logical sequence so that I can present an alternative point of view to a text. 

 

Success criteria: 

• I can identify an alternative viewpoint to the one presented in a text. 
• I can create clear, logical, sequential texts using temporal connectives 
• I can use prepositional, adverbial and adjectival phrases to elaborate on ideas  
• I can choose vocabulary and language patterns that suit the task 
• I can present to an audience including multimodal elements 

 

Essential knowledge:  

• Information about point of view can be found in the English Textual Concepts video Point of View. 

As a class, read A Guide to the Truth About Trolls, or listen to the digital recording. Ask students what type of text this is. Students should recognise that while it is a fictional account, it is written in a non-fiction article style. 

 

Ask students how a troll would feel reading this article. Students might notice that the text uses negative words like stupid, selfish and bad-tempered, and that a troll might feel offended or outraged at being portrayed in this way. 

Set the scene: 

Organise students get into groups of three. Explain that each group will be creating a similar article, but this time it will be a guide for trolls warning against humans. Groups will be presenting their work as a presentation to the class. Clearly inform students that the success criteria will be used to assess their work at the completion of the task, consequently they should consider each of the criteria when writing and editing their presentation. 

Some questions to ask as prompts: 

• How do you think a troll feels about humans? 
• What are some things that humans do that might be strange to a troll? 
• How would a troll speak? 
• What kind of personality would a troll have? 
• What are some things a troll would find disgusting/funny/curious/amazing about humans? 

 

Have students identify the subheadings for A Guide to the Truth About Trolls. Write the subheadings on the board for students to refer to, replacing any mention of “troll” with “human”. Give groups time to create a storyboard using the subheadings of the article to plan their text. They can select three subheadings (one each) for their presentation rather than address all eight. The subheadings are: 

Watch out! 

How to tell if there are humans about 

How to know you have met a human 

How to recognise a human once you’ve met one 

How to treat a human 

How to refuse an invitation from a human 

How to get rid of a human 

Who has seen a human? 

 

Once groups have their storyboard with three subheadings, they can write a script addressing one each. Remind students that they will be planning their talk from the troll’s point of view. Encourage creative answers. A sample script is below. 

How to refuse an invitation from a human. Humans are weak, anxious creatures who care about what you think. When a human invites you somewhere, like their birthday party, say NO! loudly in their face, then laugh as they run off crying. 

Students present their talks to the class. 

Assessment as/of learning:  

Using the success criteria for this lesson you might like to incorporate these into a marking rubric using the LISC templates available on the Digital Learning Selector and include what a good presentation looks and sounds like.