48. The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch
August 13, 2009 at 9:37 am 1 comment
Retell: After a fire-breathing dragon destroys her castle, Elizabeth dons a paper bag and goes off to rescue the ‘charming’ Prince Ronald. Through cunning wit she tricks the dragon and frees the prince only to realize that perhaps he wasn’t worth saving after all.
Topics: fairy tales, dragons, princesses, princes
Units of Study: Fantasy, Social Issues, Talking and Writing About Texts
Tribes: personal best, mutual respect
Habits of Mind: persisting, managing impulsivity, thinking flexibly, striving for accuracy
Reading Skills: interpretation, inference
Writing Skills: writing interesting dialogue
My Thoughts: This is a TC read aloud classic that I have seen used in several workshops on planning effective interactive read alouds. For such a short book, there are many ways you could teach with it. It’s a great book for discussing gender issues during the Social Issues unit. After rereading this book for the 20th time I just realized what a great text it is for teaching the Habits of Mind. Elizabeth uses a lot of them! For example, her entire castle burns down but she persists and goes to save Prince Ronald. She has no clothes but thinks flexibly and fashions a dress out of a paper bag. After competely exhausting the dragon she strives for accuracy and manages impulsivity by checking to make sure the dragon is truly knocked out.
Entry filed under: Uncategorized. Tags: dialogue, dragons, fairy tales, fantasy, inference, interpretation, managin impulsivity, mutual respect, persisting, personal best, princesses, social issues, striving for accuracy, talking and writing about texts, thinking flexibly.
Teachable Texts 
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96. Jim and the Beanstalk by Raymond Briggs « 365 Read Alouds | September 30, 2009 at 7:18 pm
[…] Thoughts: This can be filed under “stories with a twist”. (See The Paper Bag Princess post). This is a spoof/sequel to the story, “Jack and the Beanstalk”. In this […]