"A Surprise for Dingo" - AC: English Year 2 Learning Sequence

 A Surprise for Dingo

The details of this lesson and the way it links to the Australian Curriculum as are follows:

Learning Area: English

Focus Strand: Literature

Focus Sub Strands: Examining Literature

Content Description: Discuss the characters and settings of different texts and explore how language is used to present these features in different ways (ACELT1591)

Focus Strand: Language

Focus Sub Strands: Expressing and Developing Ideas

Content Description: Identify visual representations of characters’ actions, reactions, speech and thought processes in narratives, and consider how these images add to or contradict or multiply the meaning of accompanying words (ACELA1469)

The text is called "A Surprise for Dingo" by Rina A. Foti and Sandra Kendell

Click HERE to download/view the teacher's lesson plan.When you click the link it will open in Goggle Docs. When that screen opens, click on FILE and then DOWLOAD.

Below are photos of some of the whole class discussion sheets. Click the photo to enlarge in another screen.

In the photos above you can see the "maybe" statements first using the clues from the front cover. The next photo is the modelled character analysis.  The cluster of "good" or "bad" event predicitions is the last photo. This was interesting depending on what they thought of the dingo character as to whether it was a good or bad event.

In the lesson plan you will read where students use RoundTable to write what they think the characters might be saying on the front cover. The students enjoyed doing this and they needed to build upon what previous student/s had written so the speech sequence was cohesive. Here is a photo of the students:

This photo shows their team presenting their speech bubbles:

Click HERE to download a copy of the speech bubble sheet if you would like to to this activity. When you click the link it will open in Goggle Docs. When that screen opens, click on FILE and then DOWLOAD.

It is interesting to note that if you read this story with a "bad" character voice for the Dingo up until the "suprise", the students really believe the dingo is a "bad" character. I showed the students how changing my voice changes their idea of what the character is like. They said I "tricked them"! :-)

This series of lessons enabled the teacher to collect Achievement Standard evidence regarding the students ability to identify language features used to describe characters.