Elizabeti’s School – response and vocabulary

Materials needed:

• Elizabeti’s School, by Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen
• chart paper
• response sheet with feeling vocabulary on it: elizabeti-feeling-vocabulary
• Words Come Alive booklet by Flynn Center for the Performing Arts

Web Resources:

• Words Come Alive

Vocabulary:

fidget, twirled, lonely, nervous, excited, proud, worried

Lesson: (this lesson may take several days)

The children should have had some experience with the Words Come Alive activities. Use of  techniques from Words Come Alive will help students better understand the feelings that Elizabeti has throughout the story. Th

Ask the children what they remember about Elizabeti from the other Elizabeti books that we have read (Elizabeti’s Doll and Mama Elizabeti). Tell the students that today we are going to read another book about Elizabeti. This time she will be starting school for the first time. How did you feel before starting school? Have the students share some feelings. Read the story.

Discussion points:

• page 3 – What did Elizabeti do that showed she was excited?
• page 8 – Why did Elizabeti slow down as they got closer to the school?
• page 12 – How is Elizabeti feeling on this page? How do you know?
• page 20 – Why did Elizabeti decide she didn’t want to go back to school?
• page 28 – What were the new things she had shown Mama and Baba? Why did her feelings about school change again?

After reading the book and the discussion, have the children use the activity Character Moves from Words Come Alive to show how Elizabeti’s feelings change throughout the story. Make sure to show her excitement, her nervousness, her loneliness, and her proud feeling of accomplishment at the end.

Brainstorm with the children the different emotions that Elizabeti felt throughout the story. List on chart paper. (I then used the list of words that the children came up with to put in the word bank on the response sheet.)

Then, the students think about times that they have felt the same way. Have the students turn eye-to-eye, knee-to-knee and share with a partner. Children can share out to the whole group.

When the children go back to their seats, they will complete the response paper. The response paper has the students reflecting on a time that they had one of the emotions that Elizabeti had during the story. They will write their response and complete a picture.