The human family are in opposition to the wombat not because the humans are trying to get rid of her, but because they have different goals which cannot coexist: The wombat hasn’t been given a name. Often this is because a character stands in for a group. In this case, she stands for your typical wombat, doing typical wombatty things. Activity9 - Explicit teaching/Joint Construction (The 'colon' and 'lists') Reviewthe use of punctuation in the story, i.e.capital letters, colons and full-stops. Family wants to dry washing on the line; wombat doesn’t want things dangling onto her nose, so chews washing on line. We can extrapolate that things will continue as they did before, but this time the wombat’s life is even more convenient as she doesn’t even have to walk up the garden path to get fed. COMPARE AND CONTRAST

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.Ask students to create a list oftheirmorning routine before school - incorporating the use of a colon. Before you commence - ask the students to look at the pictures to see what Wombats like to do and what they like to eat. 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,

Since our main character a wombat she is unable to communicate what she wants to the humans. This is one of the reasons animals are so common in picture books. They are like young children, also unable to communicate what they need in words. Evening: Have decided that humans are easily trained and make quite good pets. Night: Dug new hole to be closer to them. Slept” Told as a week of entries in a wombat's diary, the early part of the week features entries such as this: 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.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. single work picture book The Children's Book Council of Australia Annual Awards 2003 2003 single work column To review 'lists' jointly constructed in previous lessons and ensure students know what they need to include in their diary writing. So they're real characters, wombats. Diary of a Wombat is written from the wombat's perspective, and is incredibly adorable and funny. Her diary consists of sleeping, eating, scratching, and sleeping some more - until a family of humans moves in and she discovers she can get some tasty food if she bangs on tin rubbish bins. She's also protective of this new family, and valiantly does battle with the flat hairy creature (the doormat) before demanding a reward.