Who Sank the Boat, by Pamela Allen

Before reading activities
1Skim and scan – students are given the opportunity (as a class/ individually) to flick through the book and gain a general idea of what it is about. Attention is given to title, headings and visuals, including the layout of the text.
2Discuss who the intended audience is, whether it is fiction/ nonfiction and what features are evident in the text that identify this. Students must refer back to the text to justify their comments and develop further understandings.
3With use of concept map students will lead
discussion about their understandings of animals and how this conflicts with the text. Discussion about nonfiction texts and the author’s intentions and purpose when writing the book.
During reading activities
4An emphasis on the rhyme will be made
throughout reading the book.
5 Throughout the text, students will be prompted to identify the sequence of the events to develop meaning and understandings, making use of positional language. E.g. Students will be asked who
is already in the boat – ‘first the cow got in the boat, next the horse got in the boat and last the pig got in the boat’.
After reading activities
6Discuss and list characters. Students will draw all five characters and label them using environmental print provided by the teacher. After participating in text modelling by the teacher, students will choose a
character and write about it, keeping in line with the story.
7Students are to sequence pictures from the story, referring back to the book. Students will then write one or more sentences using positional language to support the pictures.
Questions from Bloom’s (revised) Taxonomy
Who do you think will sink the boat? Why did you think this? Bloom’s –Synthesis, Gardener’s Multiple Intelligences
Intrapersonal
Why do you think the author chose to write the text in rhyme? Bloom’s –Evaluation
If you were the animals in the story, how would you stop the boat from sinking? Bloom’s –Application
Did the mouse do the right thing? Why? Bloom’s –Evaluating, Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences –Verbal/ linguistic