Develop Criteria Sheet for Diary Writing exercise with the whole class - through discussion and revision of 'Diary of a Wombat' and previous lessons. Interview with my 4 year old (who won the book by scratching her ear with her toe, just like a wombat)**

The reader learns, comically, that animals can train humans, not just the other way around! HOW WILL LIFE BE DIFFERENT FROM NOW ON? I love that this story is told in the diary format. The wombat, which I don’t know this creature very well, is giving his story. He is cute and cuddly and just a little oblivious to the fact that he is very very destructive to things around him. He might be cute, but I sure wouldn’t want to be his neighbor. I really like this book and I can see many way that can be incorporated in students learning. The book also has expressive emotions, when the wombat is expressive that he liked carrots. This is promoting good emotional development in children to be expressive of their feelings and behaviour.An activity for the children will be writing a week journal themselves, monitor what they have done during the week even though it might be simple words. single work children's fiction ; The Slightly True Story of Cedar B. Hartley (Who Planned to Live an Unusual Life) Martine Murray, Meet Mothball, the naughtiest wombat in Australia. Bored with her daily routine, Mothball goes in search of shelter and food, creating chaos in the lives of the humans around her. Shortlisted - Australian Publisher's Association Book Design Awards for Best Designed Children's Picture Book (2003)

Activity9 - Explicit teaching/Joint Construction (The 'colon' and 'lists') Reviewthe use of punctuation in the story, i.e.capital letters, colons and full-stops. Meanjin Online 2018 ; Visions and Values : The Children’s Book Council of Australia’s Prizing of Picture Books in the Twenty-First Century Erica Hateley, Activity 7. Guided Reading - read the story a second time. This time pausing at various points to ask questions. Explain Task: Students are going to imagine they were a family pet. (of their choice) and write a diary account of one day in the life of this pet.

A wombat is an endearing little pest as he attaches himself to a family who, in what becomes a moment to be regretted, shares some carrots with him. This is one of my favourite picture books, ever since it first came out, and it's taken me seven years to finally get a copy - but the wait is worth it. The Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) administers the oldest national prize for children’s literature in Australia. Each year, the CBCA confers “Book of the Year” awards to literature for young people in five categories: Older Readers, Younger Readers, Early Childhood, Picture Books and Information Books. In recent years the Picture Book category has emerged as a highly visible space within which the CBCA can contest discourses of cultural marginalization which construct Australian (‘colonial’) literature as inferior or adjunct to the major Anglophone literary traditions, and children’s literature as lesser than its adult counterpart. The CBCA has moved from asserting its authority by withholding judgment in the award’s early years towards asserting expertise via overtly politicized selections in the twenty-first century. Reading across the CBCA’s selections of picture books allows for insights into wider trends in Australian children’s literature and culture, and suggests a conscious engagement with social as well as literary values on the part of the CBCA in the twenty-first century.' What Are We Feeding Our Children When We Read Them a Book? Depictions of Mothers and Food in Contemporary Australian Picture Books Laurel Cohn, This is an oblivious character who doesn’t see the havoc she wreaks behind her. She doesn’t realise the humans filled up her hole because they didn’t want a hole. Unlike Peter Rabbit, she doesn’t realise the carrots in the garden have been planted there by someone and that she thieved them. She thinks she happened upon them. WHAT DOES SHE WANT? With a lazy, roly-poly character like this wombat, you aren’t going to get a complicated plan. The plan is simple: to walk to the family’s front door and make a nuisance of oneself until food is provided.

This is the week long diary of a wombat (an Australian animal that likes to dig holes, eat, and sleep.) As the week progresses and it attains its desires, the story just gets funnier and funnier; it really had me chortling. The pictures are hilarious as the wombat keeps her sleepy expression throughout all her many activities. Provides an example of diary writing for later use by the students in their individual writing task. Unusually for a children’s book, the wombat is female yet has not been given any typically feminine markers, such as a big pink bow. This is partly to do with the realistic style of art. (There is no obvious sexual dimorphism in wombats — you can’t easily tell the sex of a wombat unless you’re an expert.) I wonder if you assumed the wombat was male until “For Pete’s sake! Give her some carrots!” A study by Janet McCabe told us that unless animal characters are given obvious female markers then we tend to read them as male.Create a timeline of events by listing mothball’s activities under each day’s heading. Display thelistin the classroom. Q. What is Mothball describing as a ‘flat, hairy creature?’ Response: The doormat. (Text participant) Source: Abstract. y What is an Ebook? What is a Book App? And Why Should We Care? : An Analysis of Contemporary Digital Picture Books Betty Sargeant, Diary of a Wombat is a highly entertaining book. It’s brief, simple text and hilarious illustrations encourage children to make inferences about the story. Children enjoy comparing Mothball’s point of view with what the humans probably thought about all of Mothball’s antics. Diary of a Wombat is written in past tense and contains repetition of a range of irregular past tense verbs, such as ate, slept and dug.

Don't be fooled. this wombat leads a very busy and demanding life. She wrestles unknown creatures, runs her own digging business, and most difficult of all - trains her humans. She teaches them when she would like carrots, when she would like oats and when she would like both at the same time. But these humans are slow learners. Find out how one wombat - between scratching, sleeping and eating - manages to fit the difficult job of training humans into her busy schedule. The family’s plan is to work around the mischief of the wombat, filling in holes once they’re dug, buying more carrots once the home store is depleted. BIG STRUGGLEIn all honesty, this book was quite a funny read to begin with. Fortunately, there was a copy of this book in my placement school, that I couldn’t resist to read it a couple of times. The book is depicted with soft tone illustrations. It is about the life of an Australian wild animal that is quite demanding and cannot be tamed. A week journal from Monday to Sunday and what the wombat activity consists off. I say wild, yet it has a confident approach to the human’s territory. The wombat is so cute, that any act that doesn’t perceived to be right to the adult is forgiven instantly. Even though he seems to be a bit pesky, in its own view he doesn’t seem that he is doing anything wrong! He lives a simple life, sleep and eating carrots and oat. (Promoting healthy eating!) In Diary of a Wombat, the gag doesn’t rely on the accumulation plot, so it’s much more subtle. You can see it in the line, ‘Demanded oats AND carrots’. Oats and carrots have been the important twin desire lines throughout the story and they come together at the end. WHAT DOES THE CHARACTER LEARN? Ask students to discuss the story 'The Wombat Diary' in theirgroups, with reference to the class timeline (displayed),and identify Mothball's main motive in life, then describe how he achieves it. single work picture book ; The Slightly True Story of Cedar B. Hartley (Who Planned to Live an Unusual Life) Martine Murray, In small groups students can read aloud their diary entries and select the best one (peer assessment) to go forward to the class competition, based on the agreed criteria above. Whole class sharing - the selected student from each group can read aloud and share their diary writing.