Subject: LANGUAGE- Reading Appreciation Grade: 5 Primary

Duration: 30 minutes

General Aim: Acquisition of Skill (Appreciation)

Specific Aims: To lead children to an evaluation of a passage from Meindert DeJong's "The House of Sixty Fathers".

Basic Method: Appreciation

Preparation: Teacher: Has prepared copies of pages 62 & 63 for each student.

PRESENTATION

CONTENT
PROCEDURE

Step 1:

Author: Meindert DeJong

"Cat That Walked a Week", "Along Came a Dog" etc. Plots deal with animals.

Preparation for Experience

Through teacher questioning and board sketches, other stories by the same author are recalled by children.

Step 2:

The soldiers were looking up.They twisted their necks and looked up into the sky, and the air over the river was so clear and bright, it looked almost as if they were staring at Tien Pao on top of the cliff. Tien Pao, too, twisted his neck and looked up into the sky behind him.There in the morning a speck appeared. It was like the speck a hawk makes when he sails over the yard of a farmer where chickens are pecking the straw. But it wasn't a high speck any more. It was a swift, high aeroplane. And now it fell screaming out of the sky toward the trucks and the horses.

Down below the trucks were not riding packed together any more - they were strung out along the road.Horsemen had tumbled off their horses and lay along the road.

All in one screaming moment the aeroplane was above the road and along the road.Low now - big and snarling. It came with a horrible stuttering screech of bullets.

Some of the trucks stopped, some of the drivers threw themselves into the rice paddies along the road.Some of the trucks rolled on into the hail of bullets and explosions. A truck turned over, its wheels thrashing the air like the many feet of a great, clumsy bug.

The Experience

As children follow copies, the teacher reads the extract aloud.

Step 3:

Children's comments.

 

 

Setting: A mountain valley

Characters: Plane, convoy,Tien Pao Content plan: 1.Attention attracted to sky. 2.Speck becomes plane. 3.Panic in convoy. 4.The attack and destruction. Mood: Interest captured, peaceful setting.Forewarning of danger to come.Urgency, fear, futility.

Style: Use of imagery: plane "a speck", like hawk searching for its prey, the truck like"a clumsy bug". Use of vocab to sustain image e.g. "swift high.. fell screaming ..low now.. big and snarling.. horrible screech." Trucks and soldiers are like chickens - aimless panic, helplessness, "not packed together.. strung out.. Use of contrast Trucks together .. then strung out. Plane high, then above and along the road. Some trucks stopped, some rolled on etc.

Discuss effect of changing centre of interest e.g. the sky, action on ground, back to the plane.

Discussion

Following a short period for reflection, children comment freely on the passage, quoting sections deemed effective or interesting.

 

Through teacher's questioning, literary aspects of the passage are discussed. Board sketching and impromptu dramatisation may be employed in clarification and extension of observations.

Step 4:

The passage

 

 

 

Renewed Experience

Selected students and teacher read the extract aloud.

Teacher commends individuals for contribution to discussions.

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