Storytelling lesson plan for primary school: Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister
Aggiornamento: 25 set
Teach sea vocabulary 🐠 🦑 and emotions 🎭 with this uplifting story, which will remind students of the summer they have just left behind.☀️
Level A1 | Ages 6-10 | Speaking, listening, some writing | Topics: sea, friendship, emotions
Topic: the sea/ fish/ friendship/ emotions
Language skills: Speaking, listening, some writing
Soft skills: remembering, understanding, creating, performing, analyzing
Materials: fish puppet, shiny object, sea related objects, story book or read aloud, roll of paper, watercolors and brushes, sand, sea shells, paper cups, water, popsicle sticks.
Setting the scene: the story box
Show students your story box which could contain:
a fish puppet or flashcard
a shiny little object which could be compared to a precious scale
other sea related objects: if you are by the beach you could have some sand, shells or sea water
Show students the objects one by one
Elicit their names and ask them to repeat
Ask students to tell you what they think the story is going to be about. Acceptable answers could be: fish, the sea, the ocean
Tell the story
The story is full of emotions so ensure you convey the fish’s mood in each part of the story: at the beginning he is a little arrogant and full of himself, then he becomes lonely and sad and in the end is happy.
Make sure you elicit the name of each emotion, stop and ask children how do they think the fish feels at any given time.
Ensure they make the connection between: “fish - selfish - no friends - sad” and then “fish - generous - lots of friends - happy”
While reading, stop and ask names of animals that appear in the story or objects you have previously shown.
Class activities
Activity 1
Skill: remembering
Check what students remember by asking simple factual questions:
where is the story set
who is the protagonist
who else is in the story
You can create more questions by thinking of the 5 Wh- question words.
Remember that, at this level, it would not be appropriate to ask “why?” as this is a level B1 question.
Activity 2
Skill: Understanding
Discuss the protagonist’s behaviour towards other fish.
Write the following words on the board “selfish”, “arrogant”, “generous”, “friendly”.
Discuss their meaning by providing practical examples and short role plays.
Ask students to draw a story map: write the story title at the top, then add 3 columns titled “beginning”, “middle”, “end”.
Now ask students to create sentences with the adjectives you provided and place them in the correct part of the story. E.g “The Rainbow Fish is selfish” and then write it in the “beginning” column.
Circulate to monitor and correct grammar and spelling if necessary.
At the end of the activity ask students how the Rainbow Fish went from having no friends to have lots of friends.
Activity 3
Skill: Creativity
Divide students in small groups.
Provide each group with a roll of paper and some water colours
Ask students to create a poster of the sea.
Encourage them to use a variety of materials, including sand, shells and so on.
Ask them to decide what animals and plants they want to have in the poster: different types of fish, octopus, seahorses, etc.
At this stage, they don’t necessarily need to reproduce scenes from the story. The objective of this activity is to produce their own idea of the sea and sea creatures.
When posters are finished, create a display area and ask students to go around and observe displays produced by other groups.
Activity 4
Skill: Role Play
Older students
Divide students in groups of four.
Assign each student in the group one of these roles:
Rainbow fish
small fish
starfish
octopus
Ask them to create a short dialogue (one sentence for each character) and write it down.
Circulate to monitor and correct grammar and spelling if necessary
Ask students to try out the dialogue and interpret it as much as possible.
When all groups are happy with dialogues and performance, they act it out in front of the class.
Younger students
Assign each student a character:
Rainbow fish
small fish
starfish
octopus
Each students draws and colours its character
Once all characters are ready, students cut them out and stick them on a popsicle stick.
Students improvise and act out scenes from the story and language previously acquired.
Example of a suitable dialogue could be:
Rainbow fish: Hello
Octopus: Hello! What’s your name?
Rainbow fish: My name is Rainbow fish. What’s your name?
Octopus: I’m octopus
Activity 5
Skill: Analyzing
Create a class survey by asking students to decide if Rainbow Fish was right to give his scales to the other fish.
Put a “ballot box” in the middle of the room
Ask students to write “Yes” or “No” on a piece of paper and cast their vote.
Explain that voting is important as it is a way of making your opinion count.
Once all students have voted, open the ballot box and count their votes.
Collect results and write the official count on the board.
Ask students to represent results on a bar chart on their exercise book
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