Ready-to-teach lesson
Use Text Evidence
The Paper Bag Princess - Grade 1 - Short lesson
TIME
OBJECTIVE
20 minutes Work out what the book is saying about what makes a real princess, and prove it from the pages. .
PRODUCT
Two columns, then the last page in your own words Essential question: The words say they did not get married. Why is that the happy ending?
- Materials
- Text to mark
- • The book
- • Passage 2 - the engagement, and a prince with a tennis racket
- • One column sheet
- • Passage 11 - the rescue, and what each of them says about the
- each
- other
- Prepared passages: Passage 2, Passage 11, Passage 12
Lesson sequence
1 Launch - 4 min
- Passage 12 - the last page
- Focus:
- Four words worth arguing about
- Teacher direction:
- Read Ronald's last order out loud - come back and rescue me when you are dressed like a real princess - and stop there. Ask the class what a real princess is, and whether Elizabeth is one.
- Prepared text:
- Passage 11 2 Teacher model - 6 min
- Teacher model:
- I look at the first picture and the last one together. In the first, Elizabeth is in a long white gown looking at Ronald, who is looking away with his racket. In the last she is a black shape jumping in the air against the sunrise with her arms out, in a paper bag. I ask which of the two pictures shows somebody happy, and the class can see it from across the room.
- Prepared text:
- Passage 2, Passage 12 3 Two kinds of princess - 10 min
- Focus:
- Dressed like one, or doing what one does
- Teacher direction:
- Using Passages 2, 11 and 12, write what Ronald thinks makes a real princess, and what the book thinks.
page 1
- Expected answer:
- Ronald thinks a real princess is a matter of how you look: clean hair, pretty clothes, shoes, no smell. That is his whole list, and he gives it to the person who has just walked past a dragon to get him out. The book thinks the opposite, and shows it rather than saying it: Elizabeth is dressed properly on the first page and does nothing, and is filthy in a paper bag on the last page and has done everything. She loses her home, her clothes and her wedding and the last picture has her jumping in the air with her arms out in front of the sunrise. So the book is saying that what she did counts and what she was wearing does not.
- Student product:
- Two columns: Ronald's real princess, and the book's
- Prepared text:
- Passage 2, Passage 11, Passage 12
Support & extension
Above: Ronald's complaints are all true. Explain why the book still thinks he is wrong.
Below: Fill the two columns, then write what the last page shows.
Assessment
- Says Ronald thinks a princess is about how she looks
- Names two things on Ronald's list
- Says Elizabeth did the rescuing
- Says she is still wearing the paper bag at the end
- Says the last picture shows her happy
page 2