Northern Lights - Lord Asriel!

This engaging and informative lesson enables students to understand the key features of effective anti-heroes, as characterised by Lord Asriel in Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights. In particular, students interpret key character traits of Lord Asriel evident in the 7th chapter of the text, before utilising this understanding to make predictions about the later events involving Lord Asriel, and then creating and describing their own anti-heroes.

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

• Comprehending how Lord Asriel is introduced in the novel opening, through a fun, interactive team activity;
• Collectively defining the features of effective anti-heroes;
• Reading an extract from Chapter 7 of Northern Lights, identifying and explaining Lord Asriel’s characterisation as a anti-hero;
• Making predictions about Asriel’s future role in the novel, based on their interpretations of his character, and understanding of the generic conventions of anti-heroes;
• Creating and describing their own imaginative villains, utilising the features of villains effectively and imaginatively throughout;
• Peer assessing each other’s learning attempts.

Included is:

• Whole lesson PowerPoint - colourful and comprehensive;
• Paper extract of Chapter 7 of Northern Lights (freely available online);
• Lord Asriel Prediction Worksheet;
• Create Your Own Anti-Hero 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.