John Lewis’s Christmas advert 2019 is a wonderful story of Excitable Edgar and his daily struggles with being too excited about everything that is Christmas.

The advert lends itself to all stages of the Emotion Works progression. During a note taking session, pupils should watch the advert in its entirety, jotting words onto a note board or story board that suits the stage of the class to extract as much emotional vocabulary as they can. For older pupils, the advert can be examined in different perspectives either by Edgar, by his friend ‘Ava’ or by the townsfolk. If using a 7- cog model, pupils should be able to note that the intensity of his excitement grows throughout the advert and this is shown by the amount of fire that comes from his nose. The influences or back story for Edgar is that he, time after time ruins fun Christmas events for the people of the town and they all turn against him as they are scared of what he might do next. 

Using the vocabulary from the advert, pupils should recreate an Edgar, displaying the vocabulary that they have elicited. Refer to the PowerPoint attached for the vocabulary listed above and some nice craft activities to make Edgars.

Some real life examples from classes 2019:

For younger pupils to develop vocabulary around emotion words, select still images of Edgar throughout the movie clip (see PowerPoint for these images). Pupils can sort the images into positive emotions and negative emotions. Ensure that when having these discussions and deciding whether it is a positive or negative emotion to look closely for behaviours or facial expressions to make the link between emotion words and behaviours. If linking it to the body sensations, ask the pupils to think of what their nose might feel like if it had fire coming out of it? Use hot/cold, tingly or tickly symbols give a visual representation to the words.