Notes for debate and discussion and for oral presentations Tell Me Booktalk

Transcription

1 Love That Dog by Sharon Creech, Bloomsbury Jack doesn t like poetry. And he s certainly not a poet. He has nothing to write about anyway. Or does he? Love That Dog is a powerful narrative poem that explores a child s reluctance towards poetry and his development as a poet over the course of a school year. Through reading Jack s comments and poems, written in response to his teacher, Miss Stretchberry, the reader is drawn into the experiences and thoughts of a boy who has something important to tell us, not only about his own story, but about the nature of writing, the child s experience of being taught, and about just how personal the experience of learning is. The text is often minimal and the deceptive simplicity of each day s entry draws the reader in. Highly moving and highly memorable, Love That Dog was described by poet Benjamin Zephaniah as simply the most original book I ve read for years. Overall learning aims of this teaching sequence: To explore the differences and similarities between poetry and prose. To read aloud a range of poetry. To experiment with different forms of poetry. To empathise with characters and note how they develop over time. To discuss ideas and themes raised within a text. To read and enjoy a wide range of poetry, and gain experience of a range of poetic forms. To encourage children to see texts as potential sources for ideas and language on which they can draw for their own writing. This teaching sequence is designed for a Year 5 or Year 6 class. Overview of this teaching sequence. This teaching sequence is approximately 3 weeks long if spread over 15 sessions. Teaching Approaches Writing Outcomes Reading aloud and rereading Notes for debate and discussion and for oral presentations Tell Me Booktalk Poetry Debate and argument Written feedback Writing in Role Poetry anthology Drama and Role Play Annotations Shared Writing Bookmaking Visualisation and Drawing Readers Theatre Resources A range of poetry books, collections and pamphlets as a focus within your reading area, for independent and guided reading, and for research. Copies of the poems from the back of the book for each child (The Red Wheelbarrow, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, The Tiger, dog, The Pasture, Street Music, The Apple, Love That Boy). You may want to source the full texts for some of the poems, as within the book some are reproduced in extract only. Teaching Sessions Sessions 1 and 2: Reading aloud, Discussion, Note Taking Reading aloud - Reading aloud is one of the most important ways that children are motivated and supported to become readers. It is essential that children experience hearing texts read aloud in the classroom as a regular part of each school day. Reading aloud slows written language down so that children can hear and absorb the words, tunes and patterns. It enables children to experience and enjoy stories they might otherwise not meet, enlarging their reading interests and providing access to texts beyond their level of independence as readers.

2 In the first two sessions, the children will become familiar with many of the poems referred to in Love That Dog, which allows them to access better the text when they read and discuss it. Prepare a pamphlet for each child, created using copies of the poems at the back of Love That Dog (The Red Wheelbarrow, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, The Tiger, dog, The Pasture, Street Music, The Apple, Love That Boy). Read aloud each of the poems to the whole class. Split the class into small mixed ability groups and allocate each of the groups one of the poems to rehearse and ask them to prepare to read their poem aloud in unison. Once each group has read their poem through a few times, ask each group to split again into pairs or trios to discuss their chosen poem in more detail. Give each child a copy of the Poem Grid (see below) to help them to structure their discussion. Following their discussion, ask each child to fill in their grid individually, using their previous structured discussion to help them articulate their ideas on paper. In Session 2, give each child a copy of all the poems, as the focus of this session will be on sharing what each group has explored and discussed about their focus poem. In the same groupings in which the children were arranged at the beginning of Session 1, ask the groups to compare their individual notes on their poem and to prepare, as a group, a short oral presentation to the rest of the class about their poem, using the grid to help them structure their thoughts. In turn, each group performs their poem in unison to the rest of the class and then presents their responses on their poem to the class. Following each of the presentations, encourage other children in the class to share their thoughts and responses to each poem that is read and discussed. Title/ poet What do you think the poem is about? What do you think the poet wants to say? Is there anything that puzzles you about this poem? Favourite words/ lines. Why have you chosen these words/ lines? Rhyme, alliteration, repetition simile, metaphor, personification? Draw a picture of what the poem makes you think of. Session 3: Reading aloud, Tell Me Booktalk. Tell Me Booktalk is an approach, developed by the author and educationalist Aidan Chambers, to discussing texts that supports all readers and writers and is particularly useful for those children who find literacy difficult. In its simplest form, the approach is based around asking children Tell me about four key elements of a text, likes and dislikes, puzzles they have, and connections they make, both within the text and from other sources. Display the text for Jack s first entry (September 13) that starts I don t want to. Read the text aloud to the class, or ask a child in your class to read the text aloud. Ask your children, in pairs, to discuss the text, using the basic Tell Me questions: Tell me what you liked about this piece? Was there anything you disliked about it? Was there anything that puzzled you? Were there any patterns or connections that you noticed? Ask your children to feed back to the rest of the class on their likes, dislikes, puzzles and connections. As a whole class, discuss what the reader is able to infer about Jack s character from this one short piece of text.

3 Ask the children to speculate about why he might not like poetry and about what he may enjoy instead. Begin a whole class timeline about Jack, which will chart his development over the course of the ten months the book spans. Draw a long horizontal line on a large sheet of paper. Above the line, write what Jack does and says and below the line, what we can infer about him. Fill this in for September 13, based on the whole class discussion. Ask your children what they think Miss Stretchberry s response to Jack might be when she read about his opinions about poetry. In pairs, children to discuss what her response to Jack s comments might be, and what her motivations for the comment might be. Each pair formulates their likely response from Miss Stretchberry and then, as a whole class, share the range of responses and discuss. Sessions 4 and 5: Debate and Discussion, Reading Aloud Debate and Discussion - Debating ideas calls for a formal and objective response to the text and helps children begin to analyse a character s actions and motivations. You can structure debates inviting 'for' and 'against' arguments around particular statements arising from a book. Poetry can be a highly personal experience and your children will bring to this book a whole range of attitudes and prejudices of their own towards the form. In these two sessions you will be asking the children to consider their own attitudes to both reading and writing poetry. Read aloud the entries for September 13 and September 21. Discuss as a class what Miss Stretchberry s response to Jack might have been to his entry of September 13. Ask your children, in pairs, to list some of the poems they know (either by title, by poet or by words or phrases they remember from the poem), and that they have read in school and at home. If you have a range of texts available in the classroom, share children s poetry anthologies and collections from which the children can remind themselves of poems they may already know. Ask them to make notes on their personal reactions to these poems, whether they like or dislike reading poetry, and why they think this might be. Ask your children, individually this time, to consider times they have been asked to write poetry. Ask them to think about how they feel about writing poetry and add to their notes. Ask the children to discuss in groups their likes and dislikes about both reading and writing poetry. Ask them to list some of their likes and dislikes both about reading poetry and writing it. In Session 5, discuss with the children, Jack s statement Boys don t write poetry. Girls do. Ask them, in small groups, to prepare and stage a short class debate based on the statement, building a case around one or the other side of the argument. Stage a short debate on the subject, using the children s notes to structure the argument. Read aloud the entry for September 27 before the next session and add any comments the children have about Jack and his attitude towards poetry to the timeline. Session 7: Shared Writing, Reading aloud Shared writing is one of the most important ways a teacher can show children how writing works and what it s like to be a writer. Acting as scribe, the teacher works with a small or large group of children to create a text together, enabling them to concentrate on their ideas and composition. Display and read aloud the entry for October 4. Read aloud The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams to remind the children of the inspiration for Jack s poem and ask them whether Jack s poem leaves any particular questions unanswered. Ask the children to take the role of Miss Stretchberry and to discuss Jack s poem as she might have considered it and to discuss what their response, as the teacher, might be. Share writing a response from Miss Stretchberry, taking ideas and comments from the children s discussions. Read aloud the entry for October 10. Ask the children to compare Miss Stretchberry s comments in the October 10 entry with the shared piece of writing. Before the next session, read aloud the entries from October 17 to November 6. Add any further information to Jack s timeline. Session 8: Reading aloud, Drama and Role Play Role play and drama provide immediate routes into the world of a story and allow children to explore texts actively.

4 Through drama and role play, they are encouraged to experiment with the 'what if?' of the text and make it their own. Read aloud the entries for November 9, 15 and 22, in which Jack responds to Miss Stretchberry s suggestion that he should write a poem about a pet. Display the text for these three entries so all children are able to see it. Ask your children in pairs to get into role as Jack and Miss Stretchberry and to role play the dialogue between the two, with the child role playing Jack using the text to give the discussion a structure (NOTE: the first of these entries is in response to something Miss Stretchberry had written, so the first part of the dialogue should come from her character). Give each child a copy of the text for these two entries and ask them to compose comments, questions and responses from Miss Stretchberry. Ask some children to share their responses and discuss any differences between the approaches taken. Read aloud to the end of the entry for January 17. Hold an informal class discussion about what makes poetry different from a piece of prose. Encourage the children to use evidence from the text so far (for example, Jack s assertion that his piece about reading the small poems was not a poem. Add any further information to Jack s timeline. Session 9: Readers Theatre Readers theatre is a valuable way for children to work in a group to perform the text. Children can begin marking or highlighting parts of the text, indicating the phrases or sections to be read by individuals or by several members of the group. This enables them to bring out meanings, pattern and characterisation. Read aloud the entry for January 24. Give the children copies of the entry in pairs to read aloud and to mark up. Although the text is short and spare, there is a lot that can be inferred from the scene Jack describes. Ask the children to create the scene of Jack and his parents going to the animal protection shelter to find a dog, writing dialogue to match the actions in the scene. Ask the children to assign themselves parts and to rehearse the piece for performance. After viewing some of the performances read aloud the entry for January 31 and discuss as a class Jack s request that Miss Stretchberry should remove the lines about the dogs being killed before displaying it to the class. Before the next session read up to the end of the entry for March 14 (display the entry My Yellow Dog for the children to see the visual effect of the poem. Add any relevant information to Jack s timeline. Session 10: Reading aloud, Annotating Recap with the children on the earlier discussion about what makes a poem different from prose. Display the entry for March 14 and as a class, draw up a list of some of the key elements that make this a poem rather than a piece of prose (the key differences here include the line breaks, the approach to punctuation, or lack thereof, the use of short phrases that run on into each other, all of which influences the way it is read. Read aloud the entry for March 22 and then give the children a copy of the text without the line breaks (see resources) and ask them how this presentation affects the way it is read, and on how it affects the text s meaning. Ask the children, in pairs, to mark up their scripts with line breaks, experimenting with different length lines to see how that affects the meaning and how they read it. Ask the children, again in pairs, to edit the copy without the line breaks, either using a physical cut and paste process or using a word processor. Before the next session, read up to the end of the entry for May 8. Session 11: Tell Me Booktalk, Reading Aloud Read aloud the poem dated May 14 My Sky. Use the basic Tell Me questions to discuss the poem. Tell me what you liked about this piece? Was there anything you disliked about it? Was there anything that puzzled you? Were there any patterns or connections that you noticed? Give groups of three a copy of the poem My Sky and copies of the poems at the end of the book. Ask the children in groups of three to re-read the poem and to focus in particular on the connections aspect. Ask them to identify, from their pamphlet of poems at the end of the book, where Jack has used elements of the

5 different poems to inform his own. Discuss the connections the children have made as a whole class. Add further detail to Jack s timeline. Sessions 12 to 14: Reading aloud, Writing Poetry, Drawing, Visualising, Tell Me Booktalk. Visualisation - Asking children to picture or visualise a character or a place from a story is a powerful way of encouraging them to move into a fictional world. Children can be asked to picture the scene in their mind's eye or walk round it in their imaginations. Finally they can bring it to life by describing it in words or recreating it in drawing or painting. Read through to the end of the book. Using the Tell Me questions as the basis for a whole class discussion about the children s overall likes and dislikes about Love That Dog. Use the timeline you have created to extend the discussion to explore how Jack s motivation and attitudes change over the course of the book, and how he develops, especially his development as a poet. Give each child their copy of the poems at the end of the book as a support, and ask each child to visualise a memorable moment for them (you could first discuss the sorts of everyday events this could be, in order to help the children get over the empty brain problem Jack had at the beginning of Love That Dog). Ask the children to draw the scene of their memorable moment using coloured chalks, either as a single scene, or as a series of scenes showing how events unfolded. Following this, ask the children (taking care that some children may have chosen a story that may be personal to them) to tell each other the story they have set out in their pictures. In session 13, display one of Jack s poems, and recap on what it is that makes these poems rather than conventional narrative. Over sessions 13 and 14, ask the children to use their visualisation and their drawings of their personal scenes to compose their own narrative poems using the conventions Creech uses in her narrative poem, borrowing techniques from the poems they will, by now, know well. Session 15 Bookmaking Publishing their work for an audience helps children to write more purposefully. Bookmaking provides a motivating context within which children can bring together their developing understanding of what written language is like; making written language meaningful as they construct their own texts. In the final session, work as a class, or in small groups, to create a class anthology of the poems your children have written (again taking care to be sensitive that some of the children s poems may be, as Jack s were, personal and emotive). Give your children a range of options for presenting their poems, giving them the stipulation their poems must be legible to the reader, that they should be accompanied by artwork, and that they will all be presented on the same size paper (in order that you can create a coherent anthology). Find opportunities to share and celebrate the anthology, both within class, and more broadly across the school.