- Play
- Blast off, Year 4
- Issue 7, 2019
The Twelve Men of Gotham
Learning resource
Outcomes
Worksheet: Developing settings
Understanding EN2-4A
Conduct a Question Starts visible thinking routine to generate creative questions about what the story could be about. Brainstorm a list of at least twelve questions about the story. Use these question-starts to help students think of interesting questions:
- Why ...?
- How would it be different if ...?
- What are the reasons ...?
- Suppose that ...?
- What if ...?
- What if we knew ...?
- What is the purpose of ...?
- What would change if ...?
Review the brainstormed list and highlight the questions that seem most interesting. Then, select one or more of the highlighted questions to discuss. Students could use this Question Starts Thinking Routine worksheet to support their learning.
Create a detailed story plot graph of ‘The Twelve Men of Gotham’ using this scaffolded Story Plot Graph worksheet.
Engaging personally EN2-2A
Complete a Responding to Literature worksheet to encourage students’ personal responses to the play.
Theme: At its most basic level a theme may be regarded as a message or even the moral of a text. Ask students to write a paragraph about what they think the moral of the play is. Students could use a Thinking About Theme worksheet to record their ideas. Explore further the English Textual Concept ‘Theme’.
Connecting EN2-11D
Text-to-Text connections occur when we make connections between other texts in relation to the text we are reading.
Text-to-Text: How do the ideas in this text remind you of another text (story, book, movie, song, etc.)? Complete one of the following statements:
- What I just read reminds me of (story/book/movie/song) because …
- The ideas in this text are similar to the ideas in … because …
- The ideas in this text are different than the ideas in … because …
Students complete a Text-to-Text Connections worksheet and can discuss as a class.
Teaching Strategy explained: Text-to-Text, Text-to-Self, Text-to-World Rationale.
Engaging critically EN2-7B
Complete a PMI chart. Encourage students to use their PMI chart to highlight three elements (in three different colours or use coloured post-it notes) within the narrative that are positive, negative and interesting:
- Plus/Positive: Good/Positive experiences, themes, messages, events and happenings in the text.
- Minus/Negative: Events in the text that are negative/bad experiences in the text, things that go wrong etc.
- Interesting: Anything that appeals to the student; questions, feelings and emotions that arise, morals, messages and connections that resonate with the students.
Experimenting EN2-10C
Create a film strip of ‘The Twelve Men of Gotham’ using this Story Map Organiser worksheet. Option to adapt into a podcast using Audacity.
Perform the play as a mime.
Write an Australian version of ‘The Twelve Men of Gotham’ as a narrative or a reader’s theatre script. Change the characters, setting, title and accents (use Australian slang), only keeping the complication and resolution similar. Students could use a Narrative Idea Pyramid worksheet to organise their ideas before writing. Option to perform in front of the class.
Adapt the play into a limerick about a man from Gotham. Students could use one of these Limericks worksheets to help them write their poems.
Reflecting EN2-12E
Conduct an I used to think ... But now I think … routine. This routine helps students to reflect on their thinking about a topic or issue and explore how and why that thinking has changed. It can be useful in consolidating new learning as students identify their new understandings, opinions, and beliefs. Record responses on this I Used to Think … Now I Think … worksheet.
Exit Slips are a formative assessment that can be used to quickly check for understanding. The teacher poses one or two questions in the last couple minutes of class and asks student to fill out an ‘exit slip’ (e.g. on an index card) to ascertain student thinking and understanding. Here are Instructions on filling out an Exit Slip and two Exit Slip worksheets.