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Making Predictions:
"The King's Choice"

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Subjects

  • Arts & Humanities
    --Language Arts
    --Literature

Grade

  • K-2
  • 3-5
  • 6-8

Brief Description

A fairy tale and follow-up activities teach/reinforce critical thinking/making predictions skills.

Objectives

Students

  • make predictions about what will happen next as a fairy tale is read aloud.
  • support their predictions with information/facts.

Keywords

critical thinking, predict, prediction, fairy tale

Materials Needed

  • a printed copy of the fairy tale "The King's Choice"
  • follow-up activities (provided below) for teaching critical thinking/making predictions

Lesson Plan

The Swedish fairy tale "The King's Choice", published on the Web site Whootie Owl's Stories to Grow By, is an excellent tool for teaching students to make predictions. Print out a copy of the story to read aloud to students. Before reading the story, you might mark the following places in the story where you will want to pause to ask What do you think will happen next? You might have students share their predictions orally, or you might have them record their predictions in writing on a sheet of paper or in their writing/reading journals.

  • Pause after the opening paragraph, which ends

    • Any of the councilors could rise to become a fine leader, thought the King, but which one had the necessary inner strength?

to ask students which of the King's councilors they think might be best suited to take the King's place.

  • Pause after paragraph 7, which ends

    • The wind whirled about, wrapping his woodcutter's garments tightly around him. Meanwhile, the boat nearly tipped over and the voices on board shrieked.

to ask students to predict what will happen next in the story.

  • Pause after paragraph 18, which ends

    • The King continued, "I will announce my decision at a royal banquet to be held the day after tomorrow."

to ask students to predict what will happen the next day? Who will show up for the King's royal banquet, since all of the councilors have already committed to being at the woodcutter's feast? Who might be chosen at the royal banquet to take over the King's role?

Have students record the next -- final -- prediction in writing; they should record the reasons behind their predictions, including information from the parts of the story already read that lead them to think that way.

  • Pause after paragraph 27, which reads

    • An hour later, a frazzled Lukas was led before the King's throne.

to ask students to predict what might happen next in the story.

After sharing the fairy tale "The King's Choice" with students and giving them several opportunities to predict what will happen next, you might use one of the following "making predictions" lesson ideas as a follow-up. Look through the lesson ideas to find one that is appropriate for the grade level you teach.

Making Prediction Lesson Ideas
Primary Grades

Elementary Grades

Upper Grades

Assessment

Assess students based on their written responses to the last prediction they made about the fairy tale "The King's Choice." Did students use information from earlier in the story to support their predictions? Assess them based not on whether they correctly predicted the ending to the fairy tale but instead on whether they supported their prediction with information from the story.

Lesson Plan Source

EducationWorld.com

Submitted By

Gary Hopkins

National Standards

LANGUAGE ARTS: English
GRADES K - 12
NL-ENG.K-12.1 Reading for Perspective
NL-ENG.K-12.2 Reading for Understanding
NL-ENG.K-12.3 Evaluation Strategies
NL-ENG.K-12.6 Applying Knowledge
NL-ENG.K-12.12 Applying Language Skills

See more Lesson Plans of the Day in our Lesson Plan of the Day Archive. (There you can search for lessons by subject too.)

For additional language arts/reading lesson plans, see these Education World resources:

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Copyright© 2007 Education World

Originally published 01/20/2006
Links last updated 04/11/2007