Literature Based Lesson on The Goat-Faced Girl: A Classic Italian Folktale

Name: Kate FitzGerald

Date and time of the lesson: 03/10/16, 9:00 am
School: P.S. 130, The Hernando De Soto School
Grade: 3rd
Cooperating teacher: Alina Diaconu
Room number: 302
Content area: Literature
Central Focus/Essential Question (Standard 3.3)
Essential Question: How do characters actions and dialogue help us identify character traits?
The idea is to get students to practice inference. (How do you know? Because in the text it
says.)
Goal of Lesson
In this lesson, students explore the text of The Goat-Faced Girl in order to: 1.
Identify the characters actions. 2. Show how the characters actions help the
reader identify character traits. (Students will use characters actions to find
out characters traits, and to do that students will use inference.)
Common Core Standards (Standard 2.1, 2.8)
* CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.3.3: Recount stories, including fables, folktales, and

myths from diverse cultures; determine the central message, lesson, or

moral and explain how it is conveyed through key details in the text.
* CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.3.3: Describe characters in a story (e.g., their traits,
motivations, or feelings) and explain how their actions contribute to the
sequence of events.
Student Prior Knowledge and Potential Misconceptions:
* The students already know that characters have traits and feelings.
*

Students might confuse traits and feelings. I may need to emphasize

that feelings change and traits stay the same, and that a characters
actions usually show their traits, not their feelings.

I may also need to point out that a character's feelings may change from
the beginning of a story to the end of the story based on what happens
to them, and based on other characters or events in the story.

Materials & Resources (Standard 3.1)

* The Goat-Faced Girl. Retold by Leah Marinsky Sharpe, Boston, MA: David R.
Godine, 2009.
* Graphic organizer. (Please see attached.)

Lesson Development (Standard 3.1, 3.3)

Part I:

(5 minutes): I will first introduce the students to the Essential Question (EQ)
that we will be looking at in this lesson, and tell them that we will be looking at
characters actions while we are reading this folktale. I will tell them we will
also be charting this so we can keep track.
(The Essential Question will be on chart paper so that we can refer back to it
throughout the lesson) The essential question is: What does our character
Isabella do and say that shows us what kind of person she is?
I will remind them that sometimes the author tells us directly what kind of person a character is,
and sometimes we have to look at the characters actions and words to find out, and that we will
be focusing on the second of these two things (that we will be making inferences about the
character based on her actions and words). An inference is an opinion based on evidence.
For the graphic organizer, there will be three columns with the headings,
Isabella Says," Isabella does," and What do you think the author is
telling us about Isabella?
Part II: The Reading of The Goat Faced-Girl (30 minutes)
We will read through the book and stop and think aloud. I will let students
extract the actions and dialogue, and only provide one example for them at
the start of the reading (the first one we encounter).
Tell students we will read story once (and we will stop at four different points
to do turn-and-talks, 2 students), but that they have a special assignment to
complete as character detectives while we read the story, and that they will
try to collect as much information as they can about Isabella, the main
character of the story. They will each receive a graphic organizer that will help
them to keep track of what the character does, says I will tell them that I
will pause after certain points in the story so they have time to write.
I will model making an inference in the beginning of the story, and then guide
students to do the same throughout the rest of the lesson. As I read the story,
I will stop at several different points (these will be preselected and marked
with post-its) so students can do a turn-and-talk with their partner. They will
share what they are learning about the character from the passage. After
each turn-and-talk, I will ask for volunteers to share the action, I will write
down their contributions on the board, and ask them what inferences they can
make. I will ask, What do you think the author is telling us about Isabella?
Part III: Practicing Making Inferences (10 minutes)
I will give directions for final activity of the lesson. Students will use the same

type of graphic organizer to practice doing the same type of character

analysis/inference in groups. Each group will work on a different folk tale.
These will be collected for assessment.

(5 minutes, time permitting): Finally, we will end the lesson by having 2 or 3

students share their comic strips, and explain how the characters actions and
words tell us something about the character.

Assessment:
The students will be assessed based on the completion of their final graphic organizer.
If students are able to identify one or more character actions (or something the
character says), and make an inference, they will have succeeded achieving the
lesson objective. If they are unable to do this, it will be clear that they need further
instruction to understand the process of making inferences and practice this skill.