Ready-to-teach lesson
Whole-Book Plan
The Paper Bag Princess - Grade 1 - Short lesson
TIME
OBJECTIVE
16 minutes Read the whole book and explain who rescues whom, and why there is no wedding at the end.
PRODUCT
A chart of what she lost, what she did, and how it ends Essential question: Who is supposed to do the rescuing, and who actually does it?
- Materials
- Text to mark
- • The book
- • Passage 2 - the engagement, and a prince with a tennis racket
- • One chart each
- • Passage 3 - the dragon takes everything
- Prepared passages: Passage 2, Passage 3, Passage 4
Lesson sequence
1 Before reading - 3 min
- Passage 4 - the only thing left, and a burnt trail to follow
- Focus:
- What everybody expects to happen
- Teacher direction:
- Ask the class how a story about a princess, a prince and a dragon usually goes. Get them to say who does the rescuing. Write it up, because the book is going to disagree with them twice.
- Prepared text:
- Passage 2 2 Teacher model - 5 min
- Teacher model:
- I read the first two pages and I notice how fast everything is taken away. In one page the dragon burns her castle, burns her clothes and carries off the prince. She has nothing at all - and on the next page the first thing she does is go after it, wearing the only thing in the story that did not burn.
- Prepared text:
- Passage 3, Passage 4 3 What Elizabeth does - 8 min
page 1
- Focus:
- Nothing left, and off she goes
- Teacher direction:
- Using Passages 3 and 4, write what Elizabeth loses and what she does next.
- Expected answer:
- The dragon's fire burns up her whole castle and all her clothes, and it carries Prince Ronald away to eat. So Elizabeth has lost her home, everything she owns and the person she was going to marry. What she does next is go after the dragon straight away. The only thing she can find that is not burnt is a paper bag, so she puts that on and follows the burnt trail the dragon has left through the trees.
- Student product:
- Two boxes: what she lost, what she did
- Prepared text:
- Passage 3, Passage 4
Support & extension
Above: The story could have ended with a wedding. Explain why this one does not, using what Ronald says.
Below: Fill the two boxes, then write what happened when she found Ronald.
Assessment
- Says the dragon burnt her castle and clothes and took Ronald
- Says Elizabeth wore a paper bag because it was all that was left
- Says she made the dragon show off until it was tired
- Says Ronald complained about how she looked
- Says they did not get married
page 2