Grade Levels: 3-5, 6-8, K-3

In the BrainPOP ELL movie, Mobylocks (L2U6L5) Ben is about to read Goldilocks and the Three Bears to Abby when Moby suggests they read his version of the fairytale. In this lesson plan, which is adaptable for grades K-8, students identify and discuss the use of various tenses in the movie, paraphrase sentences, and rewrite a story using a different tense.

Lesson Plan Common Core State Standards Alignments

Students will:

  1. Identify the use of the various tenses and modals in the movie.
  2. Use modals and their functions to describe the movie.
  3. Sequence the events of the movie.
  4. Rewrite sentences in a different tense.

Materials:

Preparation:

For Activity 2, Modal Mania, make a table on the board of the modals and their meanings, as follows:
Ability: can / could / be able to
Advice: should / ought to / had better
Possibility: may / might / could
Expectation: should / be supposed to
Obligation: must / have to
Prohibition: mustn’t / can’t / not supposed to
For Activity 3, What's the Sequence?, prepare the following sentence strips. You can create either one set on card stock (large enough for the whole class to see), or enough smaller sets for each pair of students.
Once upon a time, Mobylocks went for a walk in the woods.
He walked and walked and walked. Suddenly, he saw a little house.
Mobylocks knocked on the door, but no one was home.
He peeked in and went inside.
Mobylocks saw three bowls of soup on the table.
The soup in the first bowl was too hot.
The soup in the second bowl was too cold.
The soup in the third bowl was just right, and Mobylocks ate the whole thing.
Mobylocks went upstairs to lie down.
The big bed was too hard.
The bed in the middle was too soft.
Mobylocks lay in the smallest bed because it was perfect.
The three bears came home, and wondered who tasted their soup.
The three bears went upstairs and saw that someone was lying in Baby Bear’s bed.
Mobylocks jumped out the window and ran away.

Lesson Procedure:

  1. Identify the Tense. Pass out four index cards or pieces of card stock to each student. Instruct them to write one of the following tenses on each card: Present Tense / Past Tense / Future Tense / Modals. Before continuing, you may want students to refer to the Know More feature of this lesson, to review the tenses. Next, during a repeated viewing of the movie Mobylocks (L2U6L5), pause whenever an example of each tense is used. All the students must then hold up a card, identifying the tense. You may want them to elaborate further and state a reason that the specific tense is used.
  2. Modal Mania. Review the various modals using the modals table on the board (see Preparation). Then have students select one modal from the table and construct a sentence using that modal. The sentence should be about something from the movie, such as Mobylocks should not eat the Bears’ soup. To go over the activity, call out a function (ability, advice, possibility, expectation, obligation, prohibition), and ask all students who used that one to read their sentences.
  3. What's the Sequence? After watching the movie Mobylocks (L2U6L5), have the class, or pairs of students, use the sentence strips to sequence the events from the movie (see Preparation). Check the answers together on the interactive board, pocket chart, or tape the sentence strips to the board. Ask the students what tense is used in the sentence strips. Next, divide the class into small groups and assign either present tense or future tense to each group. You may have more than one group working on the same tense. Instruct students to divide up the 15 sentences from the sentence strips among the group members, and change each sentence to the tense they were assigned. Have the groups read their new stories to the class, as each student reads his/her sentence, in a Roundrobin.