I. Curricular Framework

Concept:

Differentiation

Essential Question:

What helps you distinguish fact from fiction?

Bridge:

Personification

Content:

Fact/Fiction; Cause and Effect

Outcomes:

II. Standards Aligned

III. Instruction and Assessment

1. Connect: Connecting to the Concept Experientially

Objective: To help children empathize with animal characters in a story through role playing.

Activity: Children pretend they are mice. Act like mice. Make noises like mice. Walk like mice. Act like cats. Make cat noises. Stalk like cats. Divide into groups of four, and create a skit. One cat, three mice. Children need to decide who will be which animal. Children will be instructed per group who will win, cat or mice, in each group. These skits must be acted without voices. Pantomime only.

Assessment: The enjoyment of the children.

2. Attend: Attending to the Connection

Objective: To discuss the experience, and to prepare the children to understand and enjoy the story, The Island of Skog.

Activity: Teacher will lead the discussion: How did it feel to be a mouse? a cat? When you were watching the skits, could you tell who was a cat, and who were mice? Which qualities were mouse-like? cat-like? Was the cat always the winner, loser? Did the mice ever work together? What problems might a cat make for mice? What other animals might present problems to mice?

Assessment: Quality of the children's discussion.

Assessment, Phase One, Level of Engagement, Fascination:

3. Image: Creating a Mental Picture

Objective: To have the children enjoy a story and integrate their feelings from the previous experience into the story.

Activity: Read the children the story, The Island of Skog. Show the pictures. Integrate how the children felt as mice and how the mice feel in the story. Discuss how the mice attempt to solve their problems.

Assessment: Quality of discussion.

Assessment, Phase Two, Seeing the Big Picture:

4. Inform: Receiving Facts & Knowledge

Objective: To explain some of the qualities of fiction to the students.

Activity: Teacher discusses the following with the children: Why the book is fiction. Which characteristics of cats are true. Which are not. Which characteristics of mice are possible. Which are not? What could have happened? How do we know? What could not have happened? How do we know? Elements of conflict: cat/mice, mice/skog. Discuss cause and effect. Children will be asked to write a short paper explaining their understanding of fact and fiction and cause-effect.

Assessment: Quality of their understanding and written work.

Assessment, Phase Three, Success with Acquiring Knowledge:

5. Practice: Developing Skills

Objective: To give further practice and reinforcement in fact/fiction and cause-effect.

Activity: Children are asked to find parts of the book which are fact and parts which are fiction. They are asked to find the cause-effect relationships and list them.

Assessment: Quality of their lists.

Assessment, Phase Four, Success with Acquiring Skills:

6. Extend: Extending Learning to the Outside World

Objective: To further understanding of fact/fiction and cause-effect through an art medium.

Activity: Children create fiction and non-fiction clusters on a bulletin board. They put real characteristics of animals within the clusters, animal shapes and fiction characteristics outside of the clusters. They are also instructed to make cause-effect flow charts pertinent to the story.

Assessment: Quality of the above and cooperation.

7. Refine: Refining the Extension

Objective: To allow for personal creative expression.

Activity: Ask the children to do one of the following: 1. Create their own end to the story. Create a Skog and write a description. Illustrate Skog from book's description. Write a piece of fiction using animals as fictional characters. 2. Write a skit using animals as characters. Plan a city with mice and Skog. Write three laws for a city with mice and Skog. Memorize "Mice and Skog" anthem.

Assessment: Quality of the above and efficiency with which children get to work.

8. Perform: Creative Manifestation of Material Learned

Objective: To complete a project.

Activity: Children do their project and share what they do with each other.

Assessment: Quality of the students' work and their enjoyment.

Assessment, Phase Five,Performance, Creative Use of Material Learned: