Unit 03: The Pied Piper of Hamelin – an Overview

Description

This is a very well-know story for children in the west. In this unit, students are taken through the story. Then they analyse the plot, describe the characters, rewrite and retell the story. The language activities include an exercise on verbs and another exercise where students re-sequence lines spoken by the characters. The highlight is “dramatized reading” (readers’ theatre), which can also be dramatization of the story.

The Story

The Pied Piper helped the town of Hamelin get rid of rats. The Mayor had promised him a lot of money but didn’t keep his promise. The Piper decided to play a more sinister tune, and led all the children of Hamlin into the mountain, where they disappeared forever.

Collaborating and problem solving – through working in groups in preparing for the readers theatre performance.

Objectives

Students are able to:

1. 
   Retell the story with support
   
2. 
   Describe the characters in the story and the relevant events
   
3. 
   Identify and discuss the moral of the story
   
4. 
   Rewrite the story with support
   
5. 
   Dramatize-read the story in groups
   

Grammar – Use of past tense verbs describing actions.

Text types – Short story, play

• 
  Reading short story, analyzing the plot
  
• 
  Listening and speaking – reading aloud (a story with dialogues); dramatized reading.
  
• 
  Writing – story map completion (for understanding the story structure)
  
• 
  For extended activity, an intra-class drama competition or even an inter-class drama competition can be organized (See details in the unit).
  

Materials

• 
  Story text
  
• 
  Story map
  
• 
  Worksheet for
  
  • 
    practice on verbs of movement (past tense)
    
  • 
    sequencing activity
    
  • 
    retelling the story
    
  • 
    characterization (preparation for Readers Theatre)
    
  • 
    re-writing the story
    
• 
  Suggestion for organizing an intra-class or inter-class drama competition with guidelines.
  

In the readers theatre activity, students can be arranged to take up different roles (performing different characters) according to their abilities and interests. More active students can also be appointed as the director, and students with artistic talent can design simple costumes for the characters.

Description

Students follow the story line, study the characters, work on some vocabulary exercises and on activities related to the remote control (key element in the story). The highlight of this unit is activities that develop students’ thinking, creativity, collaboration and communication skills.

The Story

The fantasy genre is both celebrated and parodied when a TV remote control begins to work on people in real life. Elements of the fantasy genre that can be explored using this episode are magical transformation of objects, unreal events occurring in real life and humorous fantasy.

Learning Targets

Knowledge Dimension/Strand

1. To establish meaning in text

2. To employ contextual and syntactic clues to understand meanings of words

• 
  To exchange ideas on the possible development and likely outcome of the story
  

Experience Strand

• 
  To respond to the events in narrative text through drawing pictures and creating new developments for the story