The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds Lesson Plan | Introduction
This unit has been designed to develop students’ reading, writing, thinking, and language skills through exercises and activities related to The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds by Paul Zindel. It includes nineteen lessons, supported by extra resource materials.
The introductory lesson introduces students to one theme of the play: dreams through a bulletin board activity. Subsequent lessons allow for discussion of additional themes and ideas.
The reading assignments are very short because the play itself is made up of only two relatively short acts. Students have approximately 15 minutes of pre-reading work to do prior to each reading assignment. This pre-reading work involves reviewing the study questions for the assignment and doing some vocabulary work for 7 to 10 vocabulary words they will encounter in their reading. You may want to have students do the vocabulary work as they read each section.
The study guide questions are fact-based; students can find the answers to these questions right in the text. These questions come in two formats: short answer or multiple choice. The best use of these materials is probably to use the short answer version of the questions as study guides for students since answers will be more complete and to use the multiple choice version for occasional quizzes.
The vocabulary work is intended to enrich students’ vocabularies as well as to aid in the students’ understanding of the book. Prior to each reading assignment, students will complete a two-part worksheet for approximately 7 to 10 vocabulary words in the upcoming reading assignment. Part I focuses on students’ use of general knowledge and contextual clues by giving the sentence in which the word appears in the text. Students are then to write down what they think the words mean based on the words’ usage. Part II nails down the definitions of the words by giving students dictionary definitions of the words and having students match the words to the correct definitions based on the words’ contextual usage. Students should then have a good understanding of the words when they meet them in the text.
After each reading assignment, students will go back and formulate answers for the study guide questions. Discussion of these questions serves as a review of the most important events and ideas presented in the reading assignments.
After students complete extra discussion questions, there is a vocabulary review lesson which pulls together all of the fragmented vocabulary lists for the reading assignments and gives students a review of all of the words they have studied.
Following the reading of the play, two lessons are devoted to the extra discussion questions/writing assignments. These questions focus on interpretation, critical analysis, and personal response, employing a variety of thinking skills and adding to the students’ understanding of the novel. These questions may be done as a group activity. Using the information they have acquired so far through individual work and class discussions, students may get together to further examine the text and to brainstorm ideas relating to the themes of the novel.
Throughout the unit students are given the opportunity to read aloud, make classroom presentations, lead discussion, and make updates on work they are doing. Thus students get to practice working in a variety of ways and the whole class gets to hear different ideas relative to the play they are reading.
There are three writing assignments in this unit, each with the purpose of informing, persuading, or expressing personal opinions. The first assignment is to inform: students build on the work that they have done for the Nonfiction Reading Assignment and write about an aspect of starting a new business. This assignment helps students to consider what is involved in starting and maintaining a new business The second assignment gives students the opportunity to express their personal ideas: students get to tell about their most important personal dream. This assignment will help students to draw conclusions from the play’s events and to examine the characters and their dreams more closely. The third assignment is to give students a chance to persuade: students choose and write about a character in the play. This assignment helps them to distinguish between characters, to define their terms, and to examine one character in depth.
In addition, there is a nonfiction reading assignment. Students are required to read a piece of nonfiction related in some way to Marigolds. After reading their nonfiction pieces, students will fill out a worksheet on which they answer questions regarding facts, interpretation, criticism, and personal opinions. If you have time to allow individual students to make oral presentations about the nonfiction pieces they have read, the whole class will be exposed to a wealth of information and students will also have the opportunity to practice public speaking.
There is an optional class project (Project New Business) through which students gain first-hand knowledge of the growing trend of people starting their own businesses.
The review lesson pulls together all aspects of the unit. The teacher is given four or five choices of activities or games to use which all serve the same basic function of reviewing all of the information presented in the unit.
The five unit tests come in three separate formats:
1. matching/short answer/essay/vocabulary (2 tests)
2. matching/short answer critical thinking/quotations/vocabulary (1 advanced test)
3. matching/multiple choice/essay/vocabulary (2 tests)
Also in this unit is an extra activities packet with suggestions for an in-class library, crossword and word search puzzles related to Marigolds, and extra vocabulary worksheets. There is a list of bulletin board ideas which gives suggestions for bulletin boards to go along with this unit. In addition, there is a list of extra class activities the teacher could use to enhance the unit or as a substitution for an exercise the teacher feels is inappropriate for his or her class.
Answer keys are located directly after the reproducible student materials throughout the unit. The student materials may be reproduced for use in the teacher’s classroom without infringement of copyright. No other portion of this unit may be reproduced without the written consent of Teacher’s Pet Publications, Inc.
