Old Monster Dog:YEAR 1-English-Elaborate
Little J is initially scared to approach the ‘monster’ in the back yard. Encouraged to face his fears, he vows to catch the frilly-necked monster and sets about building a monster trap with the help of Levi.
Elaborate - Create short imaginative and informative texts that show emerging use of appropriate text structure, sentence-level grammar, word choice, spelling, punctuation and appropriate multimodal elements, for example illustrations and diagrams
Theme - SYMBOLS & SIGNS
Organise a hat parade where the students will make and decorate a hat symbolic of a season of their choice. Students should explore the country to collect flowers, seeds, leaves, etc., to use in their decorative ideas. The hat design can be made out of cardboard and everyday materials found in their environment. Once designed, each student should catwalk the hat and explain why they chose the objects, colours and words to include, and which season the hat represents. Construct a hat display in the class, library or online to share with others.
Encourage students to write a short, sensory poem about their favourite season. In the poem, students should express how they emotionally feel when experiencing the season, what they see and do, the smells and sights. Brainstorm ideas and words that the students could use in the poem. The poem can either be rhyming poem or non-rhyming.
Read and recite familiar nursery rhymes, and have students decode what makes the verse rhyming. Have students explore and identify how the verse is constructed with a short number of lines, how it builds a narrative, which are the descriptive words, the nouns and the action words.
As a class, brainstorm a list of words that students could use and ask the students to suggest further rhyming words. Suggested resources:
flower |
pot |
sun |
cold |
warm |
bloom |
face |
winter |
power |
dot |
bun |
sold |
swarm |
swoon |
race |
splinter |
mower |
spot |
run |
bold |
born |
loom |
pace |
printer |
slower |
lot |
fun |
gold |
corn |
broom |
space |
tinter |
Develop a simple template that students can use to write or practice their poem. For example:
“In ………………….., I feel …………………..
The flowers ………………….. and the insects …………………..
I can feel the light as it covers my …………………..
The trees rustle loudly as the wind takes up…………………..”
“I shiver and wriggle in the …………………..
but love watching the fire’s shimmering …………………..
Winter is the season I was …………………..
And I spend my time trying to keep …………………..”
Suggested resources
- Teddy Rock sing 'Twinkle, twinkle little star'
- ‘Sing a song of sixpence’ sung by Teddy Rock
- ‘First Steps’ literacy program
- Gray, N., & Singleton, G. (1995). And kangaroo played his didgeridoo. Sydney, Ashton Scholastic.
- Seasons song
- McDougall, J. (2000). Anna the goanna. Canberra, Aboriginal Studies Press.
- Reade, H. (1984). Whitefellers are like traffic lights. Perth, WA, Artlook Books.
- Curriculum Pack 3: Confident Communicators (TLF-IDM009209), Remote Schools Curriculum and Assessment Materials
- Rogers, G., Scott-Mitchell, C., & Griffith, K. (2002). 100 Australian poems for children. Milsons Point, NSW, Random House Australia.
- Poetry Printables
- Monster poems
- Torres, P., Edgar, J., Edgar, E., & Saddler, T. (1987). Jalygurr, Aussie animal rhymes: poems for kids. Broome, WA, Magabala Books.