Ready-to-teach lesson
Analyze How a Character Changes
Don't Forget to Come Back - Grade 1 - Short lesson
TIME
OBJECTIVE
PRODUCT
18 minutes Describe how the girl responds to being left, and how she changes Two columns, before and after her mind about Sarah. Sarah arrives Essential question: She calls Sarah stupid before she has met her. What changes it?
Materials
Text to mark
- The book
- One two-column sheet each
- Prepared passages: Passage 13, Passage 18, Passage 20, Passage 22
- Passage 13 - a face at the crack of a closet door, and a framed penguin on the wall behind
- Passage 18 - under the bed with Panda, the room in shadow
- Passage 20 - the babysitter listening, and a panda in a scarf
Lesson sequence
1 Launch - 3 min
- Passage 22 - pizza at the table, and the book the babysitter is reading
- Focus:
- Two feelings, one page apart
- Teacher direction:
- Read the closet page. Ask the class how the girl feels in there, and then read what her parents say back and ask how she feels after that.
- Prepared text:
- Passage 13 2 Teacher model - 5 min
- Teacher model:
- I watch how she talks about Sarah. Early on she calls her a stupid babysitter, before she has met her. Then Sarah asks to come to the South Pole, and the girl decides she is not stupid, she is silly - and calls her Silly Sarah for the rest of the book. One word has been swapped for another that means something quite different, and the girl says out loud that she has changed it.
- Prepared text:
- Passage 18, Passage 20 3 How she changes her mind about Sarah - 10 min
- Focus:
- From stupid to silly
- Teacher direction:
- Using Passages 18, 20 and 22, write how the girl's feelings about Sarah change and what causes it.
page 1
- Expected answer:
- Before Sarah arrives the girl calls her a stupid babysitter and does not want her at all - when the doorbell rings she grabs Panda, runs to her room and sends word that she has gone to the South Pole. What changes it is Sarah's answer: instead of fetching her out, Sarah asks to come too. So the girl calls her Silly Sarah, which she uses for the rest of the book, and warns her that it is a long trip and very cold. By the time they are eating pizza she is inventing toppings with her, and in the morning she tells her parents that Sarah is silly - which is now a compliment.
- Student product:
- Two columns: before Sarah arrived, after
- Prepared text:
- Passage 18, Passage 20, Passage 22
Support & extension
Above: The girl changes one word about Sarah and keeps it for the rest of the book. Explain what the new word means that the old one did not.
Below: Fill the two columns, then write what she does when she cannot get her way.
Assessment
- Says the girl did not want Sarah at first
- Says she called her stupid before meeting her
- Says Sarah asked to come to the South Pole too
- Says the girl then called her silly instead
- Says the girl always told somebody she was hiding
page 2