At the same time, the teacher writes the following names on the classroom board: Clara, Leo, Mr. Abernathy, Mrs. Gable. The teacher informs students those are the pictures and names of some of the characters of the story and tells students to try to guess and match each picture with a name.

While-reading (30 minutes): The teacher tells students that they are going to read the story and they have to check if their guesses were correct. Then, the teacher hands out copies and organises a read aloud session of “The Mystery of the Missing Melody” (created using Gemini).

Once the read aloud session is over, the teacher asks students to get in small groups of three or four, choose one picture/name match and check if the guess is correct or incorrect. The teacher informs students they will have to justify whether the guess is correct or not by finding the part of the story which describes the character. Then, each group chooses one volunteer from their group to report their findings to the rest of the class.

The teacher takes down notes on the board regarding the reasons for judging the guess correct or incorrect, e.g. “This is not Leo because the man in the picture is old” “This is Clara because she is wearing a purple dress”. Then, the teacher points to the notes on the board and asks students how they can recognise a character. The students answer “We recognise them because of their description”.

Post-reading (20 minutes): The teacher tells students they are going to play a game. In the same groups as the previous step, each group chooses any character from the story and has to write a description of the character using the information in the story. Then, using a phone from one of the group members, they access NightCafe Creator and use the description previously created as prompt to generate a picture of the character (they don’t need to write the prompt in instructive language, only describe the character).

Once each group has finished generating the picture, they take turns to show their picture to the rest of the class and they have to guess what character they are seeing, justifying their answers.

Observations: the lesson is planned as part of a unit of work related to stories and appearances. In the previous lessons students should have been introduced to describing characters using the simple present tense, as the descriptions in the story are in the simple past tense.