Meet Mr Blobby: The World's Ugliest Animal

Learning intention: 

I am learning to use information from a text to imagine the experience of an individual so that I can write stories from another point of view. 

 

Success criteria: 

• I can recall facts that contribute to the experience of an individual from a text. 
• I can form ideas about how someone would feel based on their experience. 
• I can create a story based on my ideas about someone else’s point of view. 
•  

Essential knowledge: 

More information about how our own situations and experiences shape the way we respond to texts can be found in the English Textual Concepts video Point of View. 

After reading the text, discuss the fact that the article is focused on what Mr Blobby looks like, because that is what made him famous around the world. Ask students to recall blobfish facts from the text. This should include: 

• Blobfish live in some of the deepest parts of the ocean, up to depths of 1200 metres. 
• The pressure on animals at that depth would be over 100 times the atmospheric pressure that we feel on land. 
• In those depths, blobfish would look like a normal fish. However, when they’re brought to the surface by getting caught in fishing nets, the change in pressure can make them expand and cause their skin to relax, which gives them the wide nose. 
• Outside of the water, their body doesn’t hold its shape and they collapse into looking like the blobfish we see in the pictures. 
• There is no sunlight in the depths of the ocean where blobfish live. There are also no plants or vegetation, and the water temperature is only slightly above freezing. 
• Blobfish don’t move much, they just bob along the ocean floor and eat things that are passing them. 

View the video The Incredible True Story of the Blobfish to give students a visual impression of Mr Blobby’s story. Inform students that they will be creating a short comic story to tell the tale from Mr Blobby’s point of view. The comics Sallymander and The Pig Pack in the magazine can be used to demonstrate how a story is told through this medium. Discuss the way that pictures are used to show action in the story, and speech and thought bubbles are used for text and dialogue. 

Encourage students to use their imagination and be as creative and fantastical as they like. In planning their comic, they should incorporate how Mr Blobby was feeling and what he was thinking during different stages of his experience, including: 

• Peacefully living his life bobbing along the ocean floor, interacting with deep sea friends and eating food that passes him by. 
• Unexpectedly being caught up in a fishing net and being pulled up through different parts of the ocean, where perhaps he saw different sights or interacted with sea creatures he’s never encountered before. 
• Being brought up to the surface into an unfamiliar world where he changes shape and people stare at him and call him ugly. 
• Having people around the world celebrate him, leading to a lot of media attention. 

 

Students should create their comic stories in their books, or templates can be printed from Printable Paper’s Comic Pages.