Little Red Riding Hood

Teach body parts at primary school, with one of the most popular stories of all times.

Our Little Red Riding Hood story box

✨📚 A timeless fairy tale your students will love! Little Red Riding Hood is perfect for exploring new vocabulary such as body parts and important themes like safety. Ideal for discussions 💬 and creative activities 🎨✏️ in primary classrooms. A classic story that never fails to engage young learners

TOPIC: body parts / safety / listening / consequences / moral lessons

AGE GROUP: 6-10 yr olds

LANGUAGE SKILLS: speaking / listening / writing

THINKING SKILLS LOTS

remember

HOTS

organize

analyze

create

report data

SEL COMPONENT: generosity/ helping others / critical thinking

VOCABULARY: basic parts of the body

STORY BOX: wolf/ Little Red Riding Hood / grandma puppets or realia that may be representative of each (e.g. a pair of glasses = grandma). Pictures or flashcards with elements from the story are a suitable alternative.

Procedure

Pre-reading

Review vocabulary relating to body parts with the song Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. At the end of the song, ask students to sit in a circle or in the storytelling corner, if you have one. Open your story box and start introducing the characters. Point at body parts in each of the puppets, with particular emphasis on eyes, ears and mouth as they will reappear in the story.

Reading

Start telling the story. You can use a book or create your own story cards. Ensure you point at the pictures as your read, so that students can follow the events of the story.

Little Red Riding Hood story card

Encourage children to join in when lines are repeated (e.g. what big eyes you've got! All the better to see you with). Make it as interactive as possible so that learning becomes an enjoyable experience.

After reading

SKILL 1 - REMEMBER

Using puppets, ask students to tell you who the characters are. Then divide the class in 3 groups, give each group a puppet and ask students to retell the story.

SKILL 2 - ORGANIZING INFORMATION

Scatter story cards around the classroom and ask students to get them and order them in the correct sequence. Every time a new card is added, ask questions on its content and encourage students to tell you what is happening.

This activity can be replaced by individual work, you just need to create a worksheet with pictures of the most important events of the story. Students can colour and cut out the pictures, then stick them on their exercise books in the correct order.

SKILL 3 - ACTIVE LISTENING

Play a modified version of "Simon says" game. Replace "Simon says" with "Wolf says". Hold the wolf puppet in front of the class and give commands for students to execute (e.g. Wolf says: touch your head). Include commands that are not introduced by "Wolf says ..." and pretend to gobble down the head of the kids who executed them, to make it clear that they should only perform actions the wolf says they should do.

Vary speed of the game to make it more exiting. Include some unusual or fun actions (e.g. Wolf says: touch Linda's head).

SKILL 4 - CREATE

Students can make toilet paper roll characters. Characters templates can be downloaded from here. You can use the crafts to go back to the story every now and then and encourage students re-enact it using their own words.

SKILL 5 - APPLY TO A DIFFERENT CONTEXT

Ask students to pretend Little Red Riding Hood is in a different place and meets a different animal. Students create parallel scenarios for the story. Younger students can draw them, while older students can write different version of the story, using present simple and present continuous.

Alternative scenarios may be:

beach / dolphin

mountain / eagle

jungle / elephant

desert / snake

SKILL 6 - REPORTING DATA

Run a class survey on who is the best characters in the story. You can do this by asking students to raise their hands or to write their preference on a piece of paper and cast their vote in a box. Collect votes and write results on the board.

Ask students to create a bar chart using the data available. Students can then observe the graph and write one or two sentences to summarize the results.

Try this lesson plan with your classrooms and let us know how it goes. Don't forget to like, share and save. Join our blog mailing list to receive updates straight in your inbox.