Ready-to-teach lesson
Use Text Evidence
Ruby's Wish - Grade 3 - Short lesson
TIME
OBJECTIVE
20 minutes Work out which character changes in this book, and prove it from the pages.
PRODUCT
Two columns of evidence, and how he got the truth out of her Essential question: The book is called Ruby's Wish. Is Ruby the one who changes?
- Materials
- Text to mark
- • The book
- • Passage 11 - one lit window in a dark house
- One two-column sheet each
- Prepared passages: Passage 11, Passage 16, Passage 18
Lesson sequence
1 Launch - 4 min
- Passage 16 - the Lantern Festival, a plain lantern beside a glowing cockerel
- Passage 18 - the grandfather at his desk with the poem
- Focus:
- A question with a surprising answer
- Teacher direction:
- Ask the class who changes in this book. Take the first answer, which will be Ruby, and then ask what she does differently at the end from what she was doing at the beginning.
- Prepared text:
- Passage 11 2 Teacher model - 6 min
- Teacher model:
- I test it. At the start Ruby wears red, works late, and wants to keep studying. At the end she wears red, has kept studying, and is going to university. Nothing about her has turned round. Then I look at her grandfather: he watches from a window, is worried by a poem, asks questions until he gets the truth, and then does something no one in that house had done. He is the one who is different by the end.
page 1
- Prepared text:
- Passage 11, Passage 18 3 Who changes, and what the evidence is - 10 min
- Focus:
- Ruby stays the same; her grandfather does not
- Teacher direction:
- Using Passages 11, 16 and 18, write who changes in this book and give the evidence.
- Expected answer:
- Ruby does not change. She is the only girl who keeps going to the classes, she stays up at night to manage both her lessons and her embroidery, and when she is asked what she wants she says university. The person who changes is her grandfather. He starts by not knowing there is a problem - he had never thought about the lanterns before - and he does not let Ruby off with a small answer: when she offers him the yolk in the moon cake he says hmmm, as if he was still waiting, and asks whether that is really so. He asks her twice more, and by the end he has arranged something for her that nobody in that house had arranged for a girl before.
- Student product:
- Two columns: what stays the same, what changes
- Prepared text:
- Passage 11, Passage 16, Passage 18
Support & extension
Above: The grandfather gives Ruby the letter in front of the whole family, in a Below: Fill the two columns, then write what he does when she gives a small answer.
Assessment
- Says Ruby does not really change
- Gives evidence that she was determined from the start
- Says her grandfather is the one who changes
- Says he asked questions instead of punishing her
- Says he was not satisfied with her first answer
page 2