Ready-to-teach lesson
Compare and Contrast
Stephanie's Ponytail - Grade 1 - Short lesson
TIME
OBJECTIVE
PRODUCT
17 minutes Compare how Stephanie answers an insult with how she answers Two speech bubbles, and the being copied. last word Essential question: Why does being copied upset her more than being insulted?
Materials
Text to mark
- • The book
- • Passage 2 - the stairs, and a line of copied ponytails
- • One response sheet
- • Passage 6 - a ponytail out of the top of her head, drawn close up
- each
- Prepared passages: Passage 2, Passage 6
Lesson sequence
1 Launch - 3 min
- Focus:
- The reply she gives every single time
- Teacher direction:
- Say the three ugly words to the class in the flat chant the book gives them, and ask what they would say back. Collect the answers. Then read what Stephanie says.
- Prepared text:
- Passage 6 2 Teacher model - 5 min
- Teacher model:
- I read Stephanie's reply from two different rounds and it is word for word the same both times. She does not say the ponytail is nice. She does not say they are wrong about it. She says it is hers and she likes it - which is not an argument about how it looks at all, and there is nothing they can say back to it.
page 1
- Prepared text:
- Passage 2, Passage 6 3 Two different answers - 9 min
- Focus:
- Calm at the insult, furious at the copying
- Teacher direction:
- Using Passages 2 and 6, write what Stephanie says to the children when they insult her ponytail, and what she says when they copy it.
- Expected answer:
- When they call her ponytail ugly she is completely calm, and she gives the same answer every time: it is her ponytail and she likes it. She never defends how it looks. But when they copy it she is not calm at all - she calls them a bunch of copycats who just do whatever she does and have not got a brain in their heads. So the insult does not bother her and the copying does, which is the opposite way round from what most people would expect.
- Student product:
- Two boxes: what she says to an insult, what she says to a copy
- Prepared text:
- Passage 2, Passage 6
Support & extension
Above: Stephanie ends the book by insulting everybody. Explain whether that makes her right or wrong, using the last picture.
Below: Fill the two speech bubbles, then write what she says on the last day.
Assessment
- Gives Stephanie's reply to the insult
- Says the reply is the same every time
- Says she got angry about being copied
- Uses the word copycats, or brainless copycats
- Says she called the bald children ugly at the end
page 2