Overview
Ann M. Martin takes readers on a journey with Squirrel through the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of the stray dog's life. Creatively told from Squirrel's perspective, A Dog's Life gives readers an inside view of the kind of life a homeless dog might experience and helps raise awareness of the responsibilities of pet ownership. The interactive elements of this Flashlight Readers session and the lessons in this teacher's guide challenge students to create stories from a first- or third-person point of view, make decisions to drive the plot of a story, and examine the author's writing process in order to apply some of her techniques to their own writing.
Objective
Students will:
- Use text, images, and dialogue to construct a sequence of scenes and then write a story about the scenes using a first- or third-person point of view
- Reason through and make choices to steer a story's plot
- Use a map of sequenced events to tell a story
- View slideshows about Ann M. Martin's life as a writer and the process of creating A Dog's Life to learn about the author and her process
- Use the author's writing process as a model to create their own stories
Lesson Plans for this Unit
Reproducibles
Supporting Books
- Part of Collection:
- Subjects:Curriculum Development, Main Idea and Details, Literary Devices, Plot, Character, Setting, Story Elements, Writing, Animals, Writing Process, Dogs, Pets, Kindness and Compassion
- Skills:Literary Elements, Identifying Author's Purpose, Main Idea and Details, Making Inferences, Sequence of Events, Summarizing, Writing
- Duration:7 Days
