Princess Smartypantsis an amazing story that children love it. It is not a traditional fairy story with the beautiful princess and handsome prince. On the contrast, the story includes more modern themes. Princess Smartypants, an alternative princess, is quite happy being a single and does not want to get married to a prince at all. She set her 9 suitors a variety of difficult tasks which she hopes they will not be able to carry out. The prince try, but only one is successful. Will it end with “the prince and the princess live happily ever after”? The answer to the question is “No”. The ending is quite anti-tradition. In our school, the volunteer story mother told the story in Chinese version to the younger children once. That’s the first time I hear about this story. I was attracted as the children were. Also, we hope to deliver a concept of sex equity to the children while listening to the story. It is a good story for cross-curriculum linking. The story is a narrative in simple past tense and using some direct speech. The sentences repeat a lot which helps children to follow the story and reinforces new vocabulary and sentence structures. This story teaching may spend 3 weeks, 6 lessons to accomplish the goals and activities. The teaching target will be aimed on middle and higher graders. The language used and activities should be adjusted depending on the different target.
The followings are my teaching ideas and procedures:
A. Concepts and thinking:
1. Royalty introduction:
Cut out the photos of royal family from magazines. Introduce British Royal family or Japan royal family to children. The vocabularies will focus on the relative words like king, queen, prince, princess, clothes, dress, uniform, castle, horse. To give a brief introduction about royalty and their clothes and livings will be the focuses.
2. Cultural Stereotyping: Ask children to compare the Princess Smartypants with the princess in other fairy tale. Find the differences and break up the stereotyping idea about a princess. By this book, children will find Princess Smartypants wear different clothes, do different things, think different ways from the normal princess does.
3. Cause and effects: in this story, Princess Smartypants did to want to get married. So she set lots of tasks for the princes to accomplish. Each prince couldn’t accomplish his task due to some reason. Here, hope to give opportunity to students to think why the princes couldn’t accomplish his task and using the sentence structure of “The Compost prince couldn’t stop the slugs from eating the garden because the slugs are too dangerous.”
4. Problems solving: The author provided a turning point in the story by turning up a prince who can accomplish princess’s tasks. This part can provide children chances to think about problem solving. At this point, structure will focus on the sentence pattern solutions describing, e.g. The Prince Swashbuckle used wine so that he stopped the slugs eating the garden.
5. Sex equity: in the story, hope to promote the concept of providing equal opportunities by questioning gender stereotyping.
B. Language development:
1. Vocabularies:
i. Nouns: Ms, Mrs., castle, husband, suitor, task, slug, marathon, firewood, pace, disgrace, helicopter, blindfold, sucker, broom, sword, uniform, crown, elephant, pony, pets, etc.
ii. Verbs: get married, enjoy, please, smarten, mess about, turn up, accomplish, stop from, challenge, invite, rescue, chop, suggest, command, retrieve, tame, etc.
iii. Adjectives: rich, pretty, brave, well-behaved, frightening, blonde, heavy, slippery, fierce, dangerous, tiring, difficult, kind, handsome, beautiful, typical, etc.
iv. Adverbs: usually, perhaps
v. Modal verbs: could, might
2. Sentence structures:
i. Making sentence pattern S + ask + O to V.
ii. Making comparison using too+ adjective.
iii. Giving reasons using because
iv. Describing solutions using so, e.g. The pets were too dangerous to feed so that he used a helicopter
v. Simple past for narrative
vi. Simple present for speech
3. Pronunciation: the intonations and sentence stress when they retelling the story.
C. Skills:
1. Listening: listen to the story and understand what the story is about
2. Reading: read the story and be comprehensive
3. Speaking: retell the story and use the simple past tense for the story, also can imagine the dialogue in the story
4. Writing: writing using the new vocabularies and sentence pattern to rewrite the story or change the ending of the story or even better to create a brand new story.
D. Activities:
During the story telling, the following activities will be placed as warm-up or review activities.
1. Typical game: in the beginning of the story, have children to think of the typical princess will wear and their appearances. Have some word cards for the typical princess and not typical princess. Have children to choose the cards and place under the “typical” and “not typical” categories.
2. Matching game: the matching between the prince and task will be a good way to help children organize the story in sequences. The other part of the story can use the matching game is the part of Prince Swashbuckle solve all the problems. Make the picture cards and the things that Prince Swashbuckle used and the word cards.
3. Predicting the story: the story tells the result implicitly sometimes, so that’s a good way to have children predict the story by observing the pictures.
4. Making role play or imagine the dialogues for each prince: All the unaccomplished tasks are all in a narrative way; this provides children to imagine what the prince will say after failing in the task.
E. Outcomes:
1. Make a drama: children will enjoy acting out the story, especially the ending of the story.
2. Writing a different ending: if the amount of vocabularies are enough, some children might like to change the ending, to change what happened to Princess Smartypants after she turned the prince into a toad. This is a great opportunity for children to create their imagination.
3. Create a monopoly game: ask children use the pilot in the story to create a monopoly game, e.g. create Fate cards and chance cards using the story like “You use the helicopter to feed the pets, go forward 2 steps.” or “you failed to rescue the princess, go backward 3 steps”.
4. Drawing pictures: compare to the typical princess, draw the typical princess and not typical princess and use simple present express the appearance of the princess.
F. Resources:
1. DVD: there are some movies similar to the story can assistant the teaching.
2. Newspapers and magazines: gathering the photos and news from newspapers and magazines to introduce the royalty family and life. They are always good sources for handy.
3. Internet: information, movies, and photos searching on the internet always provides great resources.
G. Learning to learn:
Through the activities provided above, hope children can gain some learning strategies like clarifying, memorizing, predicting, matching, etc.
H. Procedures for teaching:
1. Introduction of the book and the author
2. Talk about the topic and play the typical game to generate the idea about “typical” and “not typical” princess.
3. Reading the story, simplify the language if necessary.
4. Insertion of reviewing activities to help children remember and familiar with the story.
5. Function structure and new vocabulary practices activities.
6. Some games during the lessons to warm up and reviewing the story.
7. Discussion about the story.
8. Worksheet for writing and sex equity.
9. Drama or role play.
10. Make an interview for sex equity questions.
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