Learning & Teaching Sequences for Reading – Fiction Level 2-3
Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes
Sample text: Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes
(Eleanor Coerr, G.P. Putman Sons)
The teaching procedures that follow can be also used with a later version of the story, Sadako (Eleanor Coerr and Ed Young, Margaret Hamilton Books, 1995).
For Levels 2–3 Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes is a longer fiction text. While containing pictures throughout, the text has many ideas that would be unfamiliar to students. It comprises nine chapters and could be one of the first chapter books that students in this range read.
While it is about a child, the events on which it is based occurred over 50 years ago in a culture different from ours. The book comprises a single main plot that gradually evolves. Each chapter deals with a comparatively self-contained event that contributes to the overall plot. Students can develop their awareness of how each chapter contributes to the plot and the questions it answers.
Both the context and the details would be novel for most Australian students at Levels 2–3. The emotions and the attitudes developed by the narrative would, however, resound with students in this range. For these reasons, it is recommended that the book be read as an interactive class activity and that it be used to assist students to learn how to read narratives of this type.
The focus of the teaching is on students learning to comprehend and use the conventions of this type of fiction text. They comprehend what is a comparatively complex topic and to manage and direct their reading activity for an evolving plot.
The teaching activities recommend both group reading activities, with one or more students reading aloud, and individual silent reading activities. During each teaching session one chapter is read as an interactive group learning activity.