The Rainbow Fish (Marcus Pfister)
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Key Stage One Unit
The Rainbow Fish has provided opportunities for writing and discussion throughout the curriculum, not just in Literacy sessions. This is a story about the importance of sharing and how friendship and belonging can be a greater thing than possessions. The opportunities for Literacy lessons are endless. Below are just a few ideas to get you started but I invite you all to add your suggestions if you have any. |
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Session 1
Teacher to read / watch the clip of The Rainbow Fish with the class. Who wrote the book? What is this person called? (author) Who drew the pictures? (rainbow fish) Read the blurb. Who are the characters? Have a selection of stills from the story that the children can order afterwards. Can they retell the story to a friend or to another pair? Draw a story mountain on the board – can the children work out what parts of the story goes in each part? Have we seen the story mountain before? Opening Rainbow fish in the sea Build up Blue fish asks for a scale. No! Problem Rainbow fish lonely. Starfish tells octopus Resolution Octopus tells RF to give scales. He does Ending He feels happy and has lots of friends Tricky words – admired / emerged / wavered – what do these words mean? Where can we look to find out? HA to look in dictionary with teacher to check meaning. Children to use the pictures they put in order earlier to write sentences underneath. Provide the children with strips of paper, long enough for all of the pictures to go on. Give space for sentences to be written underneath. Focus on full stops and capital letters at the beginning and end of the sentence. Model writing the sentence for the first image. Children to read them aloud to one another afterwards to show their understanding. Extension: can the children work in small groups to act the scene out? |
This is the most interesting version of the video as it has been animated. It's a good starting point in addition to having a physical copy of the book on your bookshelves.
PSHE LinksFish swim in schools, always working together. What sorts of things do we do when we 'collaborate?' Provide children with the outline of a fish/Rainbow Fish and ask them to suggest a word or series of words that tell us how pairs or groups of people work best together, such as 'listening,' or 'sharing' or 'thinking.'
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Session 2
Read / watch the story again up until point where he says NO! Should he have said this? Why not? How might the others be feeling right now? Can we empathise with the other fish? What is empathy and what might we do when we feel empathetic towards someone or something else? What are the consequences of acting this way? What happens now? How do you think he is feeling? Then read up until when he gives away his first scale…“Peculiar feeling” – what is this feeling? Have you ever felt like this? What has he done? SHARED? Have we ever done something kind before that we know is the right thing to do? How did it make us feel? Has anyone ever done anything selfless before?
Differentiated Feelings Sheets:
Read / watch the story again up until point where he says NO! Should he have said this? Why not? How might the others be feeling right now? Can we empathise with the other fish? What is empathy and what might we do when we feel empathetic towards someone or something else? What are the consequences of acting this way? What happens now? How do you think he is feeling? Then read up until when he gives away his first scale…“Peculiar feeling” – what is this feeling? Have you ever felt like this? What has he done? SHARED? Have we ever done something kind before that we know is the right thing to do? How did it make us feel? Has anyone ever done anything selfless before?
Differentiated Feelings Sheets:
| feelings_sheets.doc |
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Session 3
Look at a picture of the rainbow fish. What colours can we see? What colours are in the rainbow? Explain about shades of colours and how it is important to describe using more detail to help the reader imagine. Begin discussing similes: do we know what a simile is and when we might use one? Define that a simile uses ‘as’ or ‘like’ and ask the children to give a couple of examples after you have modelled some common ones like ‘as fast as a cheetah’ ‘as tall as a giraffe’ ‘wobbly like jelly’ etc. On several sheets of paper, have a different colour written in the middle of each and place the various sheets around the room on different tables. The children rotate around the room with a pencil writing anything that reminds them of that colour. For example: at the yellow table, they might write banana. Main Activity: children to complete the Rainbow Fish similes sheet. | ||
Session 4
The children should be able to re-tell the story of The Rainbow Fish to their partner without watching the video again. They still might like to use the visual prompts to help them (particularly EAL pupils). This week we will be focusing on building up to a piece of writing- the aim at the end of the week is to have re-written the story of RF in their own words using the feelings and colour words from last week as well. Before we do that though, we need to work on some simple sentence work: CL/FS
Look at a range of sentences from the RF that have not been punctuated and read it really quick without taking a breath. Ask the children if there was anything wrong? Hopefully they will help you to break it down. Have up on the iPad ready to edit and improve with the children. Model how we do this. Main: Differentiated worksheets...
The children should be able to re-tell the story of The Rainbow Fish to their partner without watching the video again. They still might like to use the visual prompts to help them (particularly EAL pupils). This week we will be focusing on building up to a piece of writing- the aim at the end of the week is to have re-written the story of RF in their own words using the feelings and colour words from last week as well. Before we do that though, we need to work on some simple sentence work: CL/FS
Look at a range of sentences from the RF that have not been punctuated and read it really quick without taking a breath. Ask the children if there was anything wrong? Hopefully they will help you to break it down. Have up on the iPad ready to edit and improve with the children. Model how we do this. Main: Differentiated worksheets...
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Session 5
Today we will build on our understanding of sentences by looking at connectives. What are connectives? How can we use them? Let’s create a huge bank of connectives that we can use this year. Write or type them up as we go- maybe write on coloured strips of paper as these can then go on display. Look again at two sentences from The Rainbow Fish… how could we join these together best? Model with the children placing the best connective in the space between two SIMPLE sentences. Explain that when we join two simple sentences together we get a COMPOUND sentence.
Today we will build on our understanding of sentences by looking at connectives. What are connectives? How can we use them? Let’s create a huge bank of connectives that we can use this year. Write or type them up as we go- maybe write on coloured strips of paper as these can then go on display. Look again at two sentences from The Rainbow Fish… how could we join these together best? Model with the children placing the best connective in the space between two SIMPLE sentences. Explain that when we join two simple sentences together we get a COMPOUND sentence.
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