Ready-to-teach lesson
Whole-Book Plan
Coriander the Contrary Hen - Grade 1 - Short lesson
TIME
OBJECTIVE
16 minutes Read the whole book and explain why nobody can move Coriander, and how Fanny finally does.
Essential question: How do you move somebody who will not be told?
Materials
Text to mark
PRODUCT
A chart of what was tried, and why the last thing worked
- • The book
- • Passage 1 - what contrary means, shown twice
- • One chart each
- • Passage 18 - the whole tailback, drawn over the hill
- Prepared passages: Passage 1, Passage 18, Passage 24
Lesson sequence
1 Before reading - 3 min
- Passage 24 - three instructions, the last one impossible
- Focus:
- A hen you can work out from two sentences
- Teacher direction:
- Read the first page and stop after the two examples. Ask the class to work out from those two sentences alone what sort of hen this is. Do not give them the word yet; let them describe her.
- Prepared text:
- Passage 1 2 Teacher model - 5 min
- Teacher model:
- I read the picture of the traffic and count what is stuck behind one hen: three more trucks, two hay wagons, a cement mixer and six cars, besides the pig truck, the tractor and the school bus that stopped first. Then I say the thing the book is relying on - not one of those drivers can make her move, and neither can her own family.
- Prepared text:
- Passage 18 3 What everybody tries - 8 min
page 1
- Focus:
- Shouting, and then the opposite of shouting
- Teacher direction:
- Using Passages 18 and 24, write what the drivers and the Buckets try first, and what Fanny does instead.
- Expected answer:
- Everybody starts by ordering her to move. The pig-truck driver and the tractor driver shout at her to move her hen, and so does every driver in the queue behind them, and all three Buckets tell her to get back to the henhouse. None of it works. Fanny does the opposite: she tells Coriander to stay right where she is, not to get out of the road, not to go back to the henhouse, and most importantly not to do what anybody asks her to do.
- Student product:
- Two boxes: what they tried, what Fanny tried
- Prepared text:
- Passage 18, Passage 24
Support & extension
Above: Fanny says three things beginning with do not. Explain which one does the work, and why the others are there.
Below: Fill the two boxes, then write why Fanny's way worked.
Assessment
- Says Coriander sat in the middle of the road
- Says the traffic could not get past
- Says the Buckets told her to go back to the henhouse
- Says Fanny told her to stay in the road instead
- Says Coriander then went to the henhouse
page 2