Feathers First Worksheet (Page 2 of 4) in pdf

What prior knowledge or experience might help my students to read this text?

• Knowledge of New Zealand’s former “first past the post” (FPP) political

system and the change to a mixed member proportional (MMP) system

• Knowledge of New Zealand birds and their characteristics

• Experience of reading and taking part in plays

• Experience of reading stories or poems that include wordplay

• Experience of inferring characteristics from dialogue.

What text features might challenge my students and require a prompt or a

brief explanation?

• Particular words and phrases, including the names of the birds,

“feathered citizens”, “weka-kicking”, “propulsionally”, “proportionally”,

“feathered fervour”, “unanimously”

• Colloquialisms, such as “stuff ourselves”, “Goody”.

A framework for the lesson

How will I help my students to achieve the reading purpose and learning goal?

Before reading

• Share the reading purpose and briefly introduce the play.

• Discuss students’ prior knowledge of New Zealand birds’

characteristics and habitats. (Making connections)

• Remind the students about the strategy of inferring. Explain that a key

part of inferring is identifying and interpreting clues from a text. Inform

them that they will be looking for information about each bird’s

characteristics, using clues from the dialogue in the play. (Inferring)

• Share the learning goal and success criteria with the students.

Reading and discussing the text

Refer to Effective Literacy Practice in Years 5 to 8 for information about

deliberate acts of teaching.

As your students read through the text, support them with any unfamiliar

vocabulary, grammar, and concepts as necessary.

• Discuss with students how a good story (or play) “shows” rather than

“tells” and that we can find out a lot about a character from what they

say and do. (Making connections)

• Give each student a copy of a character chart like the one below (with

only the birds’ names filled in). Then have the students read page 25.

Model looking for clues in the text and add them to the chart. “I wonder

what Kea is like? What can you tell from what Kea says?” “Kea likes

eating out of rubbish bins and destroying cars. I think Kea is a

mischievous bird.” (Inferring)

Feathers First Worksheet Page 2