Connecting to prior knowledge
Before reading
Use post-it notes to conceal the illustrations on the front cover of One Little Goat (one note for each character). Read the title aloud and get students to turn and talk to share their predictions about what might be on the cover. Record these predictions in a shared class notebook, physically or digitally (e.g. using Google Docs). Reveal the characters by removing the post-it notes one by one, starting with the goat and followed by the smallest to the largest characters.
- What do students notice about the characters?
- What clues do they give us about the book?
- Does this impact how the story will be told?
Conduct a whole class reading of One Little Goat.
After reading
Revisit students’ earlier predictions. Discuss:
- What did you notice?
- Were your ideas the same or different from the story?
Exploring the text in context of our community, school and ‘me’
Ask students if they have read any of Ursula Dubosarsky’s books (plan ahead and collect some for your class library). Tell them that this author was the Australian Children’s Laureate for 2020–2021.
Read One Little Goat again, prompting students to make connections to the text. Record these in the shared class notebook. Watch Story Box Library’s video, in which Dubosarsky talks about her inspiration for writing and performs a short song about One Little Goat (03:37–04:39).
NOTE: Be sure to review Dubosarsky’s website ahead of time for your own reference, as this will offer further detail about the book and the author’s personal connections to the story.
One Little Goat is based on an Aramaic song called ‘Chad Gadya’, meaning ‘one little goat’ in English. Both the original song and the picture book are examples of a traditional type of story known as a ‘chain tale’. Introduce this term to students and discuss, referring back to Dubosarsky’s text.
Share the first few stanzas (3–5 will suffice) from the English translation of ‘Chad Gadya’ and discuss the similarities and differences with One Little Goat. Students may make connections to other stories with a circular pattern (some may know There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly); these should be included in the discussion where appropriate.
NOTE: Dubosarsky shares several adaptations of ‘Chad Gadya’ on her website, providing additional background information and demonstrating how traditional stories can change over time (see also the covers by Theodore Bikel and Jack Black on YouTube). This material should be used for your understanding only, as some parts of the videos are unsuitable for Foundation students.
Play Dubosarsky’s reading of One Little Goat for students, then revisit the predictions and connections they made earlier.
As a class, come up with a list of songs, nursery rhymes, fables and/or stories that students know. You can find suggestions under More Resources. Then ask:
Is there a song, nursery rhyme, fable or story that you already have a connection to?
Using the snowball technique, invite children to share the beginning of a song, nursery rhyme, fable or story with a partner. Time this so that each person has an opportunity to share. When time is up, each pair will join another pair to make a group of four. Students will share their connections again, followed by another ‘snowball’ to create groups of eight. This ‘snowballing’ will continue until the whole class has joined up and all students have heard each other’s connections. Record these in the shared class notebook.
Rich assessment task
Picture book sort
Provide students with a range of picture books. These could include:
- Other books with a circular pattern, such as There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly
- Books written by Ursula Dubosarsky
- Books illustrated by Andrew Joyner
- Other books children have identified a connection with
See More Resources for other titles you can use to support this activity.
Ask students to use these books to complete a picture book sort. A visual like a Venn diagram may help them to categorise the books. Categories for this sort could include:
- Picture books written by Ursula Dubosarsky
- Picture books that I have a connection with
- Picture books with a pattern
- Picture books illustrated by Andrew Joyner
Capture the results of the picture book sort by taking photos and displaying them in the shared class notebook.
Responding to the text
Re-read One Little Goat to the class. Support students to begin thinking about the characters and what they could be doing, thinking and feeling. Allow them to look through the book closely to see each character’s facial expressions in preparation for the following activity.
Once students have finished looking through the book, they are to complete Y charts about what each of the characters might be thinking, feeling and doing. This could be done in small groups, with each group taking responsibility for a different character. Model this with the class using the character of the little goat. Invite students to share their completed Y chart with the rest of the class, including how they determined the information (e.g. picture clues, written text, etc.). Add the Y charts to the shared class notebook and discuss any similarities and differences between the characters.
Exploring plot, character, setting and theme
Take students on a ‘picture walk’ through the book, paying attention to the details in Andrew Joyner’s illustrations. Joyner has drawn faces on some of the inanimate objects that feature as characters (e.g. the bucket, the stick) and in the background (e.g. trees, houses). This is known as anthropomorphism. Brainstorm some reasons why Joyner might have made this decision; record students’ ideas in the shared class notebook.
- Does it change the way the story is read?
- How does it make the reader feel?
You could support this discussion with the following ideas:
- Putting faces on inanimate objects can make them look important – it turns them into characters so they are not just part of the setting.
- This could change or reinforce the reader’s feelings, or foreshadow an event.
Following this, students will take on the role of illustrator, using Joyner’s work for support and inspiration. Working individually, they will choose one of the anthropomorphic objects and change its expression, thereby changing the emotion it might be experiencing. For example, on pp. 12–13 the fire has a concerned look; what would happen if it had a happy face?
Work through some other examples. Discuss what impact this has on the meaning of the story:
- Does it change in any way?
- How does this change how the reader feels?
Invite students on a gallery walk to view each other’s illustrations and discuss the reasoning behind their drawings.
Rich assessment task
Invite students to take on the role of a character from One Little Goat. They are to act out what their character is doing in a selected part of the story and explain what they are thinking and feeling (consider recording these ‘performances’ so students can watch them back). Following the drama experience, discuss the different emotions that were expressed. Display pictures of each character and write the different emotions that students describe against their respective character(s).
Discuss how this activity might impact a reading of the story.
Examining text structure and organisation
Re-read One Little Goat, this time focusing on the text’s structure. One Little Goat has a circular structure, in which text is repeated with additional elements that build on one another. A story with a circular structure typically ends where it began. Using jumbled pages from One Little Goat, ask students to sequence the story, then discuss how the circular structure can assist with putting these events in order.
Swapping sentences
At the beginning of One Little Goat, Dubosarsky takes the words from one sentence and rearranges them to form another (pp. 1–3). Discuss the structure of these two sentences, focusing on flow, meaning and sense. Provide some sentence strips relating to different characters in the story and get students to rearrange them. For example, the stick’s introduction on p. 8 would become ‘then hit the dog a great big stick’. Invite students to act out their swapped sentences to help them decide if they make sense. What could be changed to add more meaning? Continue the discussion about why the author might have made this structural decision.
Examining grammar and vocabulary
Vocabulary detectives
Discuss the different types of words used in One Little Goat. Invite students to become vocabulary detectives and notice what the various words do (see the list below). These can also be referred to as literary devices. There will be many literary devices and illustrative techniques that students can identify, including:
| words to describe appearance | e.g. little, big |
| words to describe actions | e.g. ate, bit, hit |
| words to describe emotions | e.g. strange, poor (eliciting sympathy) |
| repetition | e.g. mentions of the little goat |
| print and font size | e.g. speech and onomatopoeia are in a different font; also observed at the end of the story |
| different coloured words | e.g. the blurb on the back cover |
Distribute the literary devices worksheet (PDF, 74KB). Re-read the book to students, guiding them to record the literacy devices encountered throughout. This could be done independently or in small groups. Invite students to turn and talk to share their responses and discuss their importance.
NOTE: You might like to conduct these exercises over two lessons, revisiting key concepts both times.
Exploring onomatopoeia
Re-read One Little Goat with a focus on onomatopoeia. Dubosarsky has intentionally written some onomatopoeia into the text, such as ‘chop’ and ‘miaow’, and attributed it to certain characters (‘chop chop chop’ is the sound of the butcher, ‘miaow’ is the sound of the cat). Discuss how the use of onomatopoeia can add to a story. Then look through the illustrations and point out the different effects Joyner has added to show movement and sound. For example, the three red lines emanating from the dog’s mouth show that it is barking; the two black marks near each of the stick’s feet show that it is running (the reader could also infer that each footstep is making a sound).
Invite students to create onomatopoeia for the remaining characters. Write these sounds on post-it notes and stick them in the book. Read the story again, focusing on how the additional onomatopoeia helps the reader to imagine the action as they read.
Exploring patterns
Re-read One Little Goat, pointing out the different spelling patterns between words (e.g. ‘goat’ is spelled with ‘oa’, which makes the /o/ phoneme or sound). Explore rhyming words for each of the characters in the book and record them on a ‘looks like, sounds like’ chart (PDF, 76KB). For example, the word ‘boat’ looks and sounds like ‘goat’, whereas the word ‘note’ only sounds like ‘goat’. Both are appropriate rhyming words with different spelling patterns. Discuss the patterns that students find when generating their rhyming words.
| Word | Looks like and sounds like | Sounds like |
| goat | boat | note |
Extend the discussion by asking students to identify the onset (the initial phonological unit) and rime (the string of subsequent vowels and consonants) in each word. You can display these words for students, using one colour to denote the onset and another to denote the rime.
Rhyming circle
Get the whole class to sit in a circle around pictures of the characters from One Little Goat. Choose a picture from the pile, then roll a soft ball to one of the students and invite them to share a word that rhymes with that character’s name. Once they have done so, ask that student to roll the ball to another person in the circle. Continue until all characters have been used as a prompt (you do not have to wait for every student to identify a rhyme for moving to a new character). Refer to the ‘looks like, sounds like’ chart to support students to identify rhyming words.
This activity can also be done in smaller groups once children understand how to produce rhyming words. Continue to discuss the different patterns in words and how this helps us when writing.
Rich assessment task
Invite students to create a new character for One Little Goat using their knowledge and understanding of the story so far. This character might be an inanimate object, an animal or a person. Discuss how they may be involved in the events of One Little Goat and how this might affect the storyline. Ask students to select an onomatopoeia that matches their newly created character (e.g. a shoe that goes ‘crunch crunch’ as it moves across the ground). They should write at least one sentence about their character, using the ‘looks like, sounds like’ chart for support. These characters could be added to the existing story of One Little Goat or used to create a class book.
Making links
The purpose of this activity is to build students’ understanding of sentence structure while also supporting them to add detail to their own work (refer to the previous lesson on literary devices under Examining > Vocabulary Detectives). Provide students with a topic-specific word related to either the text or their own experience; it could be ‘goat’ or another character from One Little Goat, or it could be something related to students’ interests. The ‘making links’ mat below will support students to create a descriptive sentence. Model how you can complete this with the whole class, then have students create their own (some students may benefit from a visual reference, e.g. pictures that have been annotated by the teacher).
| Pointer | Description word | Topic word | Action word | Place of action |
| The | little | goat | runs | in the paddock. |
| goat | ||||
| goat | ||||
| goat | ||||
| goat |
Support students to identify the pointer (‘a’, ‘an’, ‘this’, ‘those’), as this is needed to complete the sentence. A sentence needs to have a ‘thing’ that does an action. The place of the action is optional, but provides useful information.
Storyboarding
Provide each student with a circular storyboard (PDF, 68KB). This will help them create and organise their own circular story. Revisit the shared class notebook to reflect on the structure of circular stories, noting that they typically end where they began. Discuss alternate endings to circular stories by reflecting on the Picture Book Sort completed earlier (under Literature); some end differently to how they started (e.g. There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly). Guide students to map out their own stories, using illustrations and words to fill out the storyboards.
Rich assessment task
Students are to use their storyboards and ‘making links’ mats to create and publish their own circular stories. These may be created physically or digitally using a platform like Book Creator, iMovie, Google Slides or even Scratch. Invite students to share their published stories in a book club format, where they can also receive peer feedback.
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