'Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus' is an entertaining story that features a pigeon who uses persuasive techniques to attempt to drive a bus. This funny story explores the responsibility to keep promises and persuasion, whilst using speech and punctuation to enhance meaning.
This activity pack includes activities to support this text, which allow students to discuss, comprehend, make connections and understand the idea of persuading others. There are various activities that can be adapted and cater for Pre- Year 6.
Included in this pack:
* Saying verbs and 'said' synonym poster- students can use these to enhance writing by using a variety of verbs to describe how things are being said in a text. There is also a matching activity where students can choose the appropriate saying verb to go with dialogue from the text.
* Speech bubble activity- students can draw themselves and fill in dialogue to explain why the pigeon should not drive the bus.
* Contractions matching activity- students can match the contraction with the combined words.
* Punctuation activity- students identify various punctuation used in the text and write the sentences in the corresponding punctuation box.
* Emotions activity- students identify the various emotions the pigeon goes through throughout the story and notice body language, facial expressions and gestures.
* Persuasive techniques- students explore various ways you can persuade or convince someone of your point of view. They can connect parts of the text with various techniques.
* Write a Sentence- students use 'place' picture cards to build their sentence around. This will become the prepositional phrase.
* Persuasive Writing Scaffolds- students can explore various topics and identify reasons why the pigeon should not do that activity. This scaffold will help studnets to structure an argument.
* Colouring In sheet- students can complete this mindful colouring with images that relate to the story.
Australian Curriculum content descriptions
Discuss how authors create characters using language and images (ACELT1581)
Explore different ways of expressing emotions, including verbal, visual, body language and facial expressions (ACELA1787)
Recognise that different types of punctuation, including full stops, question marks and exclamation marks, signal sentences that make statements, ask questions, express emotion or give commands (ACELA1449)
Understand that different types of texts have identifiable text structures and language features that help the text serve its purpose (ACELA1463)
Understand the use of vocabulary about familiar and new topics and experiment with and begin to make conscious choices of vocabulary to suit audience and purpose (ACELA1470)
Identify the audience of imaginative, informative and persuasive texts (ACELY1668)
Create short imaginative, informative and persuasive texts using growing knowledge of text structures and language features for familiar and some less familiar audiences, selecting print and multimodal elements appropriate to the audience and purpose (ACELY1671)
Discuss texts in which characters, events and settings are portrayed in different ways, and speculate on the authors’ reasons (ACELT1594)
Draw connections between personal experiences and the worlds of texts, and share responses with others (ACELT1596)