Not strictly my creation but copied here from the thread in The Staffroom at DQ's suggestion.
This display was done by a friend in a school in the USA (posted here with permission) I think it's great fun.
She said:
"The body is made of paper plates all strung together....one plate for each student (and one for me) Each plate has a self-portrait drawing on it. After school I removed the grip sticks and hung the dragon up in the classroom
If you do try it, I'd suggest NOT using tissue paper for the dragon scales. It wrinkles too easily, especially if little ones are handling it.
Our school colors are red and gold, and the quickest way for me to get the red and gold paper on short notice was to go to the gift wrap section of the local Walgreen's! However, gold was only available in gift wrap tissue. On the plus side, I used the school die-cutter to cut out the dragon scales, and that was done quickly using the thin tissue paper."

The original is here:

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I had a go at making this tonight. I used paper plates and red, gold, and green backing paper cut in circles for the scales and purple and blue for the face. It's only 7 plates long though as it's going up on the ceiling for the chinese new year display and we're limited as where to put it because of alarm sensors so it can't be to long.
It was a great inspiration and help as I printed off the picture to guide me, when it's up I'll try to take a photo and post it even if it's not as good as this one.

I'm doing something similar with my nurture group. we have read the story of chinese new year and why the years are named after animals.
we've looked up which year the children were born and they are now going to decorate a plate with the appropriate animal as their theme.

we will go on to make a dragon with the finished plates