Possum’s Tail - Lesson Plan I

Vocabulary recognition: Possum’s tail

From Joseph Bruchac’s

Pushing up the sky: Seven Native American Plays for Children

DESCRIPTORS

Curriculum Areas: Reading, Language Arts, and Theatre Arts

Recommended Levels: Students with reading deficits grades 2-5.

Time Frame: This lesson can be adapted depending on group size and level of proficiency with Microsoft PowerPointÔ. The time frame can be between from several days to a week.

Tribal Affiliation: Muckleshoot

Geographic Location: Muckleshoot Reservation, Auburn, WA

Developed by: Cara Francis

Email addresses of developers: Meegat@aol.com

Date lesson was developed: 7/24/01

American Indian Standards:

Standard 5: Read fluently and independently, a variety of materials including those with American Indian themes.

Standard 6: Use a variety of strategies to gain meaning from text.

Standard 8: Locate and use a variety of texts to gain information, for example, historical materials about their tribe, tribal legends and stories and oral history transcription.

Standard 9: Be familiar with children’s literature with Indian themes, especially with that pertaining to the student’s tribe and literature written by Indian authors.

INSTRUCTION

Goal: To use traditional stories to increase vocabulary

Behavioral Objectives: Students will read and choose correct definitions for selected vocabulary words by holding up cards correlating to the correct response letter. Students will describe how the selected vocabulary words relate to the characters and the story.

Prior Knowledge Needed:

Students should have previously read the play “Possums’ Tail,” targeted reading ability is approximately 2.5-4.0.

Materials and Resources Needed:

· Each student should have a copy of the play from Joseph Bruchac’s book Pushing up the Sky: Seven Native American Plays for children. Computer, Projector, Microsoft PowerPointÔ. , index cards for response.

Culture Content and Strategies: This tale is a traditional Cherokee story. In this lesson, reading comprehension practice is presented through the use of a traditional story. Learning through stories has traditionally been an important method of teaching in Native American communities.

Lesson Summary and Performance Tasks:

Students will view an interactive PowerPointÔ presentation (included), each screen of which shows a word from Possums’ tail and several possible multiple-choice definitions. Method of response should be pre-written cards (index or other) which have the letters a, b, c, d, written on them. Each student will need a set of four. Students should be asked to hold up the correct response letter.

Assessment:

Assessment should be made by counting the number of correct responses out of the total. This will need to be done by tally marks. After each student has responded, on a pre-written sheet with each student’s name heading a short column, make one tally mark for each correct answer. This lesson could be repeated later in the “Possum’s Tail” unit if low levels of correct responses are given.

EXTENSION

Technology Integration:

This lesson makes use of PowerPointÔ as an interactive tool.

Enrichment/Remediation:

This presentation can be given more than once until desired mastery is achieved.

Teacher Reflections:

To be added by user