Clio has taught education courses at the college level and has a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction.
Are you reading Storm Boy, by Colin Thiele, with your students? This book tells the story about a relationship a young boy develops with his pelican in Australia. Over the course of the story, the boy also reflects on and builds his relationships with his own father, an Aboriginal man named Fingerbone, and many other animals.
To help your students benefit from their reading of Storm Boy, you might want to incorporate some activities into your instruction. Teaching literature through activities appeals to different learning styles and helps children take an active role in their own learning. The activities in this lesson will ensure that your students develop a deep understanding of Storm Boy.
You can use these activities to activate and enhance students' prior knowledge before they begin reading the book.
Much of the plot of Storm Boy has to do with the close relationship the boy develops to various natural settings as well as animals, and children will benefit from thinking about their own relationships to nature. Ask your students to paint pictures representing a place or thing in nature that they have felt close to at some point in their life. Then, give them a chance to share their paintings and talk about the feelings that they evoked.
For many readers, Storm Boy will be their first time reading a novel that was written in Australia. Ask your students to share some of the facts they know about Australia, and keep a chart of their responses. Then, ask them to list their questions about Australia; document these as well. Finally, break students into small groups and have each group research one of the questions, leaving time for them to share their findings with the rest of the class.
Here, you will find activities that you can use to help students keep track of their comprehension as they read.
Storm Boy is filled with dramatic scenes that will draw students in and help them feel the plot deeply. As they read, give them opportunities to stop and talk about which scenes are most meaningful to them. About halfway through the book, break students into small groups and have each group take responsibility for dramatizing a particular scene. Then, let them act out their Storm Boy skits for classmates to enjoy!
The setting of Storm Boy is such an important aspect of the book. Your tactile learners will be better to envision the story if they can use their hands to access it! Give each student or partnership a piece of clay, and ask them to create a small sculpture representing a particular place in the setting of Storm Boy. They can also paint their sculpture when it has dried, and write a short caption labeling it and describing its significance in relation to the novel.
This section offers activities that will help students synthesize the novel once they are finished reading.
Let students work in partnerships or small groups for this activity. Their task is to write a review of Storm Boy that offers a brief summary of the book but mostly focuses on what they found admirable or unappealing about the text. They can add illustrations to their reviews as desired. Then, compile your class' reviews into a Storm Boy newsletter that you distribute. Give students a chance to compare and contrast the reviews they have created.
Storm Boy was made into a movie in 1977, and once students have finished reading the book, they will probably be interested in watching the movie. Show the film to your class, and ask them to keep notes as they watch, documenting similarities and differences between the movie and the book. Once they are done, ask them to complete a Venn Diagram comparing and contrasting the book and the movie. Finally, ask students to write about what they would do differently if they were given the chance to remake the book into a new movie.
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