WALKING TALKING TEXTS: Grandfather’s Journey
INDEPENDENT WRITING / EXPLORING THE TEXTActivities / EXPLOITING THE TEXT
Exercises
WALKING TALKING TEXTS…
COLUMN PLANNER
for
PRIMARY Grades
Unit Title: Grandfather’s JourneyYear/Class group:
Date:
The grammatical items are those planned to be explicitly taught at this level, that is through each activity and exercise.
Tense
Simple past (ed endings)NB: American spelling eg ‘traveled’
Irregular past tense (shook, wore, began. brought, grew, thought, bought, fell, was
Past perfect – had crossed’ had remembered, had lived, had been
Past conditional: could wait no more; could not forget;
Infinitive: to see; to love; to marry;
Verbal phrase: fell in love / Sentence form
Simple: the pacific ocean astonished him
Compound: He wore European clothes for the first time and began his journey on a steamship
Complex: When land finally appeared it was the new World; The more he travelled, the more he longed to see new places, and never thought of returning home /
Person
Third person consistently until the last page where the ending is in First person / Negative formsNever did
Did not see
Never thought of
Could not forget
Could wait no more
Was not a
There was nothing left
Never kept
I can not
I miss
Endless
No longer
Pronouns/pronoun reference
Reference / Possessive / Personal
Him
It (land)
There (city) / My
His
Their
His own / He
They
I
me
/ Prepositions/prepositional phrases
In Japan
In my heart
On
In
At
For (days on end) / Ellipsis
Page 13 – omission of pronoun ‘he’
Page 12 “he shook hands”
Page 29 ‘See California”
Page 31 “the other country’ / Expressions of quality
Marvelled
Young man
European clothes
Like enormous sculptures
Endless farm fields
Huge cities of factories and tall buildings
Towering mountains
Rivers as clear as the sky
Black men, white men, yellow men
New places
Liked California Best
Strong sunlight
Lonely seacoast
New country
Baby girl
Old friends
Nearly grown
Young woman
Favourite weekend
Small boy
Like leaves in a storm (Imagery)
Just as he had remembered
Funny thing
Nearby
Large city
House (where) my grandparents lived
Beach (where) they had been children
Expressions of quantity
The more he travelled the more he longed
Return now and then
Of all the places
Many stories
Another songbird
One more time
A steamship
Three weeks
Endless farmfields
Never ending
The more he travelled / Time markers/temporal words
For the first time
When he left home
For three weeks
After a time
Then he brought
As his daughter grew
Finally, when
Once again
Sometime later
The last time
One more time
When land finally
Often walked
For days on end
On and on until / Possessive forms
Our lives
Of my own
His
my / Conjunctions
And yet…
But
So
As his daughter
When
Until
Nouns
The longing in my heart (noun phrase)
Proper nouns: Pacific Ocean; The New World; North America; Japan; California; Sierra Mountain; San Francisco Bay
Compounds: farmfields; riverboat; Steamship; seacoast; sweetheart; songbirds; homelands
Common nouns (unfamiliar): sculptures; deserts; The world
Noun groups
Huge cities of factories and tall buildings / Genre
Biographical account through using Recount
Curriculum Investigations:
SOSE – Time continuity and Change 3.1
Investigate the past and how events have impacted on individuals and groups
– mapping; tracking journey from Japan to California
– history – WW11; aspects that denote historical change (clothing, buildings, travel); timelines
– local biography of someone who lived and travelled at a similar time
– investigate the change in clothing, transport and buildings over the time covered in the text
– investigate WW11 stories from BI
Maths
3.3 Measurement- tell time accurately, including 24 hr time, read timetables, timelines and calendars and use relationships between common time units.
Create a timeline depicting the events of the text
Maths
SS 3.3 location
Interpret and create maps and plans including giving and following directions for location and paths using simple coordinate systems, scales and major compass points.
- read map scales
- Locate places using latitude and longitude
- Recreate the map depicting the route travelled by the main character
The following guide ma y be helpful in planning for development in the students’ independent writing.Students need at least half an hour a day to develop independent writing skills.
For students who are not yet independent writers, follow the Scaffolding Independent Writing methodology.
Follow the sequence below for each genre of writing begun by the students who are able to begin writing independently.
A. Have a meeting to brainstorm, talk about and list possible topics or aspects of the writing.
B. students begin first draft and continue writing this daily
C. teacher talks with individual students about their writing
D. Teacher leads a meeting to discuss the writing so far
E. Students begin to redraft and continue writing this each day
F. Teachers talks with individual students about their writing
G. Continue until this version is complete (final copy) or it is time to introduce a new writing task. / Teacher and students will need to spend from one half, up to two hours per day engaged with whole text activities:
COMPOSING
AND
CONSTRUCTING
ORAL
TEXTS
THROUGH
INTERACTION
IN
SHARED
LEARNING
EXPERIENCES
LEADING
TO
THE
CONSTRUCTION
OF
GROUP
NEGOTIATED
JOINTLY
CONSTRUCTED
WRITTEN
TEXTS
FOR
STUDENTS
TO
USE
AS
A
RESOURCE
IN
INDEPENDENT
SPEAKING
AND
WRITING
TASKS. / Learning and sharing information about reading and writing, using parts of the text.
Teacher and students read the original story/text and all the texts generated from the activities each day. Display all of these texts prominently around the room.
In examining the texts produced in the unit of work, tell the students about the conventions of reading and writing.
Use the texts as a basis for exercises to further develop students’ skills in English.
The language exercises in this column allow for practice by students in constructing and deconstructing parts of texts for themselves.
The teacher scaffolds each activity first, explaining the process to the students.
After this the students practise the activities themselves.
Day1 / 1. Discover the Text
Talk about the contents of the text. Discuss and record what the learners already know about the text in the form of a semantic web or notes. Use information from the title and illustrations to discuss what the text/story might be about.
Prediction
· Using the illustrations talk with students about what the characters look like, type of clothing, where they may live, who they may be, what they are doing, where they may be going, what may be happening, when the pictures may be set, the age of the people, and finally what they think the whole story might be about
· Record students’ predictions in the form of semantic webs. / For students just beginning literacy in English, the teaching and learning of the English sounds and letter names needs to be organised in conjunction with the following exercises.
Day1 / A shaping exercise
2. Complete oral cloze exercises
a) teacher and student together
b) Individual student (one to one) with teacher.
Teacher makes notes, keep in folio.
Choose nouns to see if children are following the basic semantics of the story
Day1 / 3.
Teacher ( as a language model and scaffolder of learners’ English) and students
a) discuss whether the text was as predicted
b) exchange ideas, opinions and feelings about the content of the text
Take each page and talk about it in detail with the students, encouraging each student to give some information
· What is the character wearing in both pictures? What do you know about these clothes? Have you seen these before?
· Tell me what this man is doing? (Page 5)
· What does this page remind you of? (page 6)
· Where is this man now? Do you think this picture is of today’s times? (page 7)
· What does this remind you of? (page 8)
· Where is this man walking? (page 9) Resources – farming pictures
· Is this the same man? Where is he? Why is he here? How does he look? Why? (page 10)
· Have you ever been to a place like this? Where is it? Why are the mountains white? (Page 11
· Who are these people? Where are they from? (Page 12)
· What is this? How do you think the motor works? What is it carrying? Does it remind you of anything?(Page 13)
· Tell me about places you have been like this? (pages 14,15)
· Who are these people? What are they doing? Are they related to each other? How do you know? (Page 15)
· What has happened? (page 16)
· What is the girl playing with? Is this happening now or in the past? How do you know? (page 17)
· Who is this man? Is this the same man? What is he thinking? Why does he have birds in cages? (page 18)
· Who are these people? Where are they going? (Page 19)
· What is growing in the fields (Page 20)
· Who are these people? Where are they from? How do you know? Have you seen people like this? Where are they now? (Page 21) resources on Japan
· Which country are these people in? How do you know? (Page 22,23)
· Who is on this page? (Page 24)
· What is this man doing? What is he thinking? (Page 25)
· What is this boy doing?(Page 26)
· What has happened to this family?(Page 27)
· How old are these people (Page 29)
· Who is this boy? (Page 30)
· Where is this person (Page 31)
· What happened to this person’s father? His grandfather? (Page 31)
· Can you find this person father in the book?(Page 31)
· Can you find this person’s Grandfather in the book? (page 31)
Day 2 / 4. Read the text with the students: students begin to ‘read along’ with the teacher. Explore the text by planning together to role-play the texts and/or parts of it (if appropriate).
Concentrate on the modes of travel/movement
At appropriate times as the story is read
- rocking on the boat
- rattling on the train
- stomping through the fields
- walking and walking
- gliding on the riverboat
- bombing of planes
Day 3 / 5. Read the text again and discuss the content of the text. Make links between the written text and the real world experiences of the students – talk about similarities and differences
Brainstorm what chn already know about
- Japan and links with Nguiu (our community)
- WW11 and Tiwi (local) stories
- Travel and trips children or relations have been on
- Children, parents, grandparents
(link to relevant parts of the book as each is discussed)
Day 3 / A shaping exercise
6.
Teacher tells students about the genre and the features of this genre so students learn how different genres are constructed. Do this by deconstructing the structure of the stimulus text and discussing how the different parts make up the whole structure of the text.
(Biographical account using a recurring narrative structure)
SETTING THE SCENE
- orientation giving who, where and what (Page 4)
- orientation continues with a series of events during his travels (Pages 5 – 14)
- series of events related to his marriage and family life - from SF to Japan back to SF (pages 15 – 19)
SERIES OF COMPLICATIONS/RESOLUTIONS
- return to Japan (Page 20)
- complication (daughter unhappy) (page 22)
- resolution – marriage (page 23)
- complication – war (page 24)
- resolution – back to village) (page 28)
- but a complication remained – Grandfather loves two worlds.
CODA
- loving two worlds is repeated in the grandson’s story on the last page
Day 4 / 7.
The students retell the text: the story line, the sequence of the events/information etc. Use the illustrations as memory joggers. Students may like to retell the story in small groups of two or three. (Make use of the tape recorder to keep records for assessment).
Using the pages in the book, have the whole group tell what is happening on each page, tchr can expand children’s talk and scaffold their English.
Day 4 / A shaping exercise
8. Teacher and students make a list of words (vocabulary expansion) which describe characters or events in the text. Display this list and add to it as the unit progresses, Make semantic webs using these words.
Ask the students to give you words from the book; then add, with the children’s participation, the targeted words – temporal words/time markers and expressions of quality, and . Aim for about 30 words.
Day 5 / A shaping exercise
9. Organise this list and other words from the unit of work in alphabetical order. For students who are beginning literacy, do exercise 10.
- (sort alphabetically to the third and fourth letters)
– whole group together
– in pairs
– individually
Continue this exercise for a 10 minutes or so every day for a couple of weeks.
Day 5 / A shaping exercise
10. For students who are beginning literacy, introduce the English alphabet and display along a wall. Teach sound and letter names. List words under the appropriate letter name. Teach the sound/letter names of single sounds, blends, word endings etc.
A focusing exercise
For students who are developing literacy, create a wall dictionary (words with meanings) or semantic webs.
Add to the dictionary or semantic webs as unfamiliar words are encountered.
Use the lists from no. 8.
Teach the students how to use this as a resource for their personal writing. Use the growing list of words on these wall resources for the study of words including spelling, rules and irregularities in rules.
For example, students, in pairs discuss and sort the words on cards into categories:
- word families
- same endings/beginnings
- sound patterns
- letter patterns
- rhyming words
- plurals etc
Children who don’t know the alphabet, take separately, in small group and using words from the word list to teach initial alphabet sounds. (Target individual sounds).