Possum+Magic+Reinforcing+Activity

Objectives: The students will be able to: 1. Listen and understand the story being read to them 2. Recognize unfamiliar words 3. Work cooperatively in groups 4. Complete a T-chart 5. Define the unfamiliar words

Materials Required: -The book, "Possum Magic" -Doc cam -copies of T-charts for the students -copies of maps of Australia for the students -classroom set of laptops or time in the tech lab -pen or pencil

Allotted Time: -2 class periods of 50 minutes each

Procedure: The teacher will start this lesson off by getting out the globe and showing the students where Australia is located. Next, the teacher will read the book “Possum Magic” to the class. The places and terms in this book that relate to Australia will make up this lesson. As the teacher is reading the book and showing it using a doc cam, the students will all have their own sheets of paper with a T-chart on it. On the left side of the T-chart, the heading will be "Unfamiliar Terms" and on the right side will be the "Description." If the students do not recognize any words or places, they should write them down on their chart, while their teacher is reading. Once the teacher is finished reading the story, the class will split into groups of three or four and each group will share which words they did not know. The other group members will try to help them if they are familiar with those words. The class will then come together and share their recordings, and the teacher will fill out a T-chart on the doc cam.

After all of the places and terms have been recorded on the left side, the students will then go to the tech lab and look up the definitions of some of the other words and find more out about the terms. The class will then come together again and fill out the right side of the T-chart. The right side of the chart will include definitions of the words, and the students will then draw a picture next to their description. If the word is a place, then the students will write what they learned from the story about that place, the people there, or the environment. Now that the students know all of the unfamiliar words, the teacher will read aloud the book to the class again. The students will be provided a little map of Australia, so that as they listen to the teacher reading the book, they can locate where exactly in Australia the possum travels. Students will create the journey that the possum took through Australia by connecting the dots from each location.

This book also accommodates the common core content statement below: 6. Models and maps represent places.