Ready-to-teach lesson
Infer Theme from the Ending
Stephanie's Ponytail - Grade 1 - Short lesson
TIME
OBJECTIVE
20 minutes Work out why Stephanie says she will shave her head, and what the book is saying about copying.
Essential question: Did Stephanie change her mind, or did she plan this?
Materials
Text to mark
PRODUCT
A prediction, then an explanation with evidence
- • The book
- • Passage 9 - the classroom, everyone colliding
- • One prediction sheet
- • Passage 10 - standing on a desk, shouting it at them
- each
- Prepared passages: Passage 9, Passage 10, Passage 11
Lesson sequence
1 Launch - 4 min
- Passage 11 - a room of bald heads, and one ponytail
- Focus:
- A prediction the book wants you to get wrong
- Teacher direction:
- Ask the class to predict, before you read the last two pages, what Stephanie's head will look like tomorrow. Write the predictions up. Then read.
- Prepared text:
- Passage 10 2 Teacher model - 6 min
- Teacher model:
- I read the announcement again and look at what she actually promises. She says that when she comes tomorrow she is going to have shaved her head - shouted, in capitals, at a room full of people who copy everything she does. Then she comes in with a ponytail. She has not changed her mind. She has worked out that saying a thing out loud is enough to make them do it, and she never had to do it herself.
- Prepared text:
- Passage 10, Passage 11 3 Why she said it - 10 min
- Focus:
- A trap, not a plan for her own hair
- Teacher direction:
- Using Passages 9, 10 and 11, write why Stephanie announced she would shave her head, and how you know she never meant to.
page 1
- Expected answer:
- She announces it because she has learnt what they will do: every single thing she has worn has appeared on their heads the following day, and by now the whole class and the teacher are copying her so exactly that none of them can see across the room. So saying it loudly is all that is needed. You can tell she never meant it because she arrives with a ponytail coming out the back - the same one she asked for at the beginning - which she could not have if she had shaved anything. She was not deciding about her own hair. She was setting a trap.
- Student product:
- A short piece of writing: why she said it, and how you know
- Prepared text:
- Passage 9, Passage 10, Passage 11
Support & extension
Above: The teacher shaves her head too. Explain what that adds to the book's point.
Below: Write why she said it and how you know she did not mean it, then what you think the book is saying.
Assessment
- Says Stephanie did not really shave her head
- Uses her ponytail at the end as the proof
- Says she expected them to copy her
- Says the class copied even after insulting her
- Gives a message about copying and points at a page for it
page 2