OH THE PLACES YOU'LL GO- DR SEUSS
UNIT PLAN
This unit plan can be used for any year in the upper primary school levels however it would be ideal for year six students towards the end of the year when they are in the process of transitioning into high school.
This unit plan will look at reading comprehension from various different angles.
1.Before reading Oh the places you'll go, students should be asked what they think the book will be about by just looking at the cover and the title, this will provide the students with a chance to utilise the comprehension strategy prediction by delving into their prior knowledge.
A good follow up activity after predicting the storyline of the book but before actually reading the book is to complete an activity called Writing with pictures: Each student is given one picture that features in Oh the places you'll go and are then encouraged to write a short piece based on what they think is happening in the picture. This activity is a form of prediction as the students are trying to decide what the picture might be representing in the story line.
2.The following activity has been designed to help students make sense of some of the more abstract lines that are in the book using inference, prior experience and by making connections.
For this activity, students should be divided up into groups and given a card with one of these lines written on them:
-“So be sure when you step, Step with care and great tact. And remember that life's A Great Balancing Act"
-“You'll get mixed up, of course, as you already know. You'll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go"
-“I'm sorry to say so but, sadly, it's true that Bang-ups and Hang-ups can happen to you.”
-"You'll look up and down streets. Look 'em over with care. About some you will say, "I don't choose to go there."
-"And IF you go in, should you turn left or right...or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite? Or go around back and sneak in from behind? Simple it's not, I'm afraid you will find, for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind"
The students should then work in small groups to discuss the lines from the text they have received. The teacher should encourage the students to think about their lines in relation to their own experiences and prior knowledge they have on the topic, e.g. students who receive the line ‘bang-ups and hang-ups can happen to you’ could discuss times in their lives when they had experienced hardship and ways they overcame the hurdles. After the students have discussed and written down anything that comes to their mind when they hear their designated lines, each group should come up and present to the class what they understood the line to be about and any connections they made.
3.Another lesson that can be used for this text is focusing on making connections between the student and the text. The book should be read together again as a class and then a discussion should begin based around student’s goals. The student’s can then self-design a poster to hang around the classroom addressing the following questions; ‘What are your short-term and long term goals?’ ‘What kind of difficulties might you face achieving your goals?’ and ‘How can you overcome these goals?’
Work samples of year 6 student's self-designed Oh the places you'll go go posters.