The Pinballs Lesson Plan | Introduction
This unit has been designed to develop students' reading, writing, thinking, and language skills through exercises and activities related to The Pinballs by Betsy Byars. It includes eighteen lessons supported by extra resource materials.
The introductory lesson introduces students to the topic of the novel by Betsy Byars. Following the introductory activity, students are given the materials they will be using during the unit.
The reading assignments are approximately twenty pages each; some are a little shorter while others are a little longer. 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 ten or less vocabulary words they will encounter in their reading.
The study guide questions are fact-based questions; 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. It might be a good idea to make transparencies of your answer keys for the overhead projector.
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 ten or less 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 an 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 book, two lessons are devoted to the extra discussion questions/activities. 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 are done as a group activity. Using the information they have acquired so far through individual work and class discussions, students get together to further examine the text and to brainstorm ideas relating to the themes of the novel.
The group activity is followed by one report and discussion/ activity sessions in which the groups share their ideas about their research of the Seventies pop culture with the entire class; thus, the entire class gets exposed to many different ideas regarding the themes and events of the book.
There are three writing assignments in this unit, each with the purpose of informing, persuading, or having students express personal opinions. The first assignment gives students the opportunity to express personal opinion: students will keep lists about themselves throughout the reading of the novel. The second assignment is to persuade: students will try to convince Mrs. Mason, their foster mother, to allow them to obtain a puppy to cheer up Harvey. The third assignment is to inform: students are to select a topic of interest to them from the Seventies pop culture, research it, and write an article about it.
In addition, there is a nonfiction reading assignment. Students are required to read a piece of nonfiction related in some way to The Pinballs. In this case, it ties in with their Writing Assignment #3. After reading their nonfiction pieces, students will fill out a worksheet on which they answer questions regarding facts, interpretation, criticism, and personal opinions. During one class period, students make oral presentations about the nonfiction pieces they have read. This not only exposes all students to a wealth of information, it also gives students the opportunity to practice public speaking.
Another feature of this unit is the speaker day. This provides an extension of the theme of foster care. A professional in this field will be asked to share insight, law, and experiences on this topic.
The review lesson pulls together all of the 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 unit test comes in two formats: all multiple choice-matching-true/false or with a mixture of matching, short answer, and composition. As a convenience, two different tests for each format have been included.
There are additional support materials included with this unit. The unit and vocabulary resource sections include suggestions for an in-class library, crossword and word search puzzles related to the novel, and extra vocabulary worksheets. There is a list of bulletin board ideas which gives the teacher suggestions for bulletin boards to go along with this unit. In addition, there is a list of extra class activities the teacher could choose from to enhance the unit or as a substitution for an exercise the teacher might feel is inappropriate for his/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 copyrights. No other portion of this unit may be reproduced without the written consent of Teacher's Pet Publications, Inc.