PET PEEVES

Written by Sarah Wilson

Illustrated by John Nez

This lesson provides opportunities for exploring the use of dialogue in a fiction story, as well as building fluency, expression and intonation skills for oral reading.

Lesson Objective:

To be able to identify dialogue in a fiction story and understand how it is used to express feelings, ideas and add detail (text-to-self and text-to-world connections)

To be able to analyze the structure of dialogue

To be able to read dialogue orally with appropriate intonation and expression

Grade Level: 3 - 5

Common Core Connections:

Meaning/Key Ideas/Details: Multiple levels of meaning, moving from general to specific knowledge through use of evidence

Craft and Structure: Explicitly stated purpose; implicit information

Language Convention/Clarity/Vocabulary: using specific vocabulary for familiar concepts, use of dialogue to support a story

Knowledge/Ideas: Multiple perspectives, everyday knowledge combined with genre connection

Phonological Awareness/Text Complexity: alphabetic principles, use of dialogue to support story structure

Strategies:

1)Students will use fluency, inflection and expressive reading skills to read this oral text effectively with each other

2)Students will be able identify the structure of dialogue in this story as well as the writing conventions associated with appropriately written conversation in text

Materials/Resources:

-Pet Peeves e-book on Tumblebooks

-SMARTboard or other interactive white board (or projector/laptop)

-Post it notes, pencils, chart paper

-Writing books/logs

Strategic Lesson Plan:

  • Display the Tumblebook Pet Peeves on the SMARTboard and as the children to make predictions about the text based on the title and cover page
  • Discuss with students what dialogue and conversation mean in a text and what they think it looks like; ask how dialogue might make a story stronger – honour all ideas (may record responses on a web on large chart paper)
  • Explain to students that today’s story uses a lot of dialogue to help readers better understand what is happening in the story (what the characters are doing and feeling)
  • Play the first three pages of the story through once on the SMARTboard for the whole group and ask the students to collectively listen for dialogue/conversation
  • Stop the story and ask the children to comment on what they noticed about the conversation in the story (more than one speaker, the story is being told through the conversation – there is not a lot of description or added detail, mainly conversation, etc) Ask them how many characters are in the story so far – how do they know? (different voices are used, different speakers are identified)
  • Ask the students to read the story independently or in pairs
  • While students are reading, circulate to provide support as needed
  • When students are finished, pull large group back together for discussion of story events – discuss how Dennis and Sue are feeling and acting in particular ways – how do students know this? (from their conversation)
  • In this story, the conversation is critical to understanding the text
  • Have students practice reading the story in role – each student in a reading group of four chooses to be either Dennis, Sue or Brad and one will be the narrator (and Claire)
  • Ask the students to mute the sound and play the story again only this time they will read the story in role, using expression and intonation
  • May have the students do this two or three times over the course of the next week to build fluency and expression in oral reading

Optional activity: to build vocabulary awareness, have students develop word illustrators for the words ‘strike’, ‘protest’ and ‘bonus’

  • In their writing logs, have students generate a ‘WORD ILLUSTRATOR’ page for the word ‘strike’
  • Place the word ‘strike’ at the top of the page On the first third of the page, write a dictionary definition for ‘strike’
  • On the middle third of the page, use the word ‘strike’ in a sentence that will help the reader make sense of the word
  • On the bottom third of the page, draw a quick sketch that illustrates the word ‘strike’
  • Repeat the process with ‘protest’ and ‘bonus’