/ Learner Resource /
School Name / Worongary State School
Subject / English / Topic / Close reading of an extract/
written imaginary text / Year / 3
Description / Sample pre-assessment taskUnit 2, Year3
Task designed by / Dallas Werder / Contact / Janelle Dickman 0467 777 965
Teaching Guiding Notes
10 lessons / Examination of characters
10 lessons / Comprehension of a narrative PART A -Pre-Assessment
5 lessons / Monitoring task PART B- Pre-Assessment


Student Name / Class / Date
PART A
Read the extract from George’s Marvellous Medicine and answer the questions.
George sat himself down at the table in the kitchen. He was shaking a little. Oh, how he hated Grandma! He really hated that horrid old witchy woman. And all of a sudden he had a tremendous urge to do something about her. Something whooping. Something absolutely terrific. A real shocker. A sort of explosion. He wanted to blow away the witchy smell that hung about her in the next room. He may have been only eight years old but he was a brave little boy. He was ready to take this old woman on.
'I'm not going to be frightened by her,' he said softly to himself. But he was frightened. And that's why he wanted suddenly to explode her away.
Well…not quite away. But he did want to shake the old woman up a bit. Very well, then. What should it be, this whooping terrific exploding shocker for Grandma?
He would have liked to put a firework banger under her chair but he didn't have one.
He would have liked to put a long green snake down the back of her dress but he didn't have a long green snake.
He would have liked to put six big black rats in the room with her and lock the door but he didn't have six black rats.
As George sat there pondering this interesting problem, his eye fell upon the bottle of Grandma's brown medicine standing on the sideboard. Rotten stuff it seemed to be. Four times a day a large spoonful of it shoveled into her mouth and it didn't do her the slightest bit of good. She was always just as horrid after she'd had it as she'd been before. The whole point of medicine, surely, was to make a person better. If it didn't do that, then it was quite useless.
  1. Where in the kitchen did George sit down? ______
  2. Why did George want to do “Something whooping. Something absolutely terrific” to his Grandma?
______
  1. How did George know that Grandma’s medicine wasn’t working? ______
______
  1. Do you think it was okay that George wanted to “shake the old woman up a bit?” Why? ______
______
  1. Using language found in the text, describe George’s Grandma. ______
______
  1. Highlight any noun groups in the text blue and any verb groups in the text red.
  2. Through language features and vocabulary choices, how did the author make you feel about George’s Grandma? ______
______
______
  1. Identify verbs from the text
Doing verbs / Thinking and feeling verbs / Saying verbs / Relating verbs
  1. Reread the first paragraph. Explain how the author used short sentences such as “A real shocker” and “A sort of explosion”, nouns groups such as “brave little boy” and verbs such as “blow away”to create an understanding of George’s character.
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Year 3 English Unit 2 Investigating characters-Monitoring checklist
Student name: ______
Imaginative narrative
Aspects of English Year 3 Achievement standard (and related concepts) / Not evident / Emerging / Satisfactory / Competent / Comments
Receptive mode / Understands how language features, and vocabulary choices are used for different effects
(Grammatical function — Verbs representing processes: doing, thinking, saying, relating)
(Grammatical function — Verb tense indicating time)
(Use of vocabulary — Extended and technical vocabulary)
Productive mode / Understands how language can be used to express feelings and opinions on topics
(Evaluative language — Graduation)
Includes writing to express and develop in some detail experiences, events, information , ideas and characters
(Creating literary texts —Imaginative texts based on characters, setting and events from students’ own and other cultures)
(Text structures and language features that create texts — Planning, drafting and publishing texts)
Demonstrates understanding of grammar and chooses vocabulary and punctuation appropriate to the purposes and context of their writing
(Editing texts — Grammatical choices)

South East Region Learner Resource template V1 – Aug 2013