Lesson video

Hello everyone.

I'm Miss Corbett and welcome to today's lesson, the Theme of Happiness in "Anna Hibiscus' Song".

I'm really looking forward to today's lesson, so I love to think about what makes me happy, but also to hear about what makes all of you happy too.

So for this lesson, you will need a copy of the book, "Anna Hibiscus' Song" by Atinuke.

As well as that you'll need some paper to write and draw on.

Can you pause the video and go and get those things now? Off you go.

Brilliant.

We're almost ready to get started.

You'll also need someone nearby to help you read the story to you and also to talk to, I think we are ready to get our listening ears switched on, our looking eyes, and our thinking brains.

Let's get started.

Today's lesson outcome is I can link a story to my own feelings and experiences.

Our keywords will help us to get to that outcome.

Are you ready to repeat them after me? Don't worry if you don't know them all because we'll come up with them throughout the lesson.

My turn, then your turn.

Theme, character setting, plot, emotion.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much for joining in with me.

So loud and proud.

The first part of our lesson will be summarising the story.

Can you remember the title of this story? I'm going to give you some thinking time.

The title of the story is, the title of the story is "Anna Hibiscus' Song".

Well done and we can remember lots from the story.

Maybe you'll use the front cover to help you remind yourself.

I would like you to pause the video and say everything that you remember about the story, but no peeking just yet.

Pause the video now, off you go.

Fantastic, let's see what you remembered.

We know that our main character in the story is Anna and from the front cover and also from reading the story, we know that she feels feelings of happiness, calmness, and relaxation.

We also know the setting.

The setting is a country in Africa, Nigeria, and we can use the bits on the front cover, as well as the whole book, to help us remember that.

So we've remembered some things, but really getting to the details, the best thing we can do is reread the story again.

Rereading a story helps us to remember the plot, as well as notice some details in the text and the illustrations.

Now you are going to read or listen to the whole story without stopping.

I really hope you enjoy.

Happy listening or happy reading.

Pause the video now.

Fantastic, I really hope you enjoyed listening to the story.

Now, thinking about the story and thinking about all of the things that Anna's family do, what would you most likely do to keep your feeling of happiness? What would you do to keep happy? I would count to five.

I would do some gymnastics.

I would pound yams. I would dance to the car radio.

What would you do? Pause the video now and share.

Thank you so much for sharing.

So you've listened to the whole story.

Let's see what you can remember.

Who are characters in the story "Anna Hibiscus' Song".

We've got Anna, Mama and sister, who are the characters? I'm going to give you five seconds to find them.

Five, one, zero.

The characters are Anna and Mama.

Even though there's lots of family members in Anna's family, she doesn't have a sister.

So, Anna and Mama are characters, but sister is not.

How does the author describe the setting of Africa? Does she describe it as boring, cold, or amazing? How is the setting of Africa described? The setting is described as, I'm going to give you five seconds to choose.

Five, two, and one.

Did you get it? She describes the setting on the first page as "Amazing".

We know that it's not a cold place 'cause Nigeria is very close to the equator, which makes it mostly a hot country for most of the year.

And from what we've read, I wouldn't describe it as boring.

Now we have reread the story.

We can summarise it by thinking about the plot.

We know that the plot is what happens in the story.

Summarising a story, which means thinking about what it's about as a whole, helps us to understand the main points and the themes.

There's one of our key words, theme.

As well as link it to our own experiences or other books that we've read.

"Anna Hibiscus' Song" is quite different to some other books that I've read, such as traditional tales like the "Magic Porridge Pot" or "The Three Billy Goats Gruff".

It's different because it does not have an obvious beginning, middle and end and it doesn't have a problem to solve.

Instead, the story explores what makes different characters in Anna's family happy.

The beginning of the story introduces Anna, the setting and the main plot.

And the main plot is understanding what makes people happy and what they do to keep their happiness.

The story ends with Anna singing a song about all of the things that make her family happy that we have seen throughout the story.

So by looking at what each family member does when they are happy, we are summarising.

Well done.

And we can see some of the things here.

Grandfather counting, grandmother squeezing hands, the Aunties pounding yams, cousins doing gymnastics, Uncle Tunde dancing and Papa holding Anna.

So all of those different things.

So let's see if you can help me to summarise the story by matching the character's name to how they show happiness.

The characters here that we have are Grandmother, Papa and the Aunties.

And the actions and things that they do to show happiness are hugging Mama, pounding yams and squeezing hands.

Hmm, which one of those can we match? Can you try and match them? So Grandmother, what does Grandmother do? Papa and Aunties.

Could you pause the video now? Off you go.

Fantastic, let's see if you are right.

What does grandmother do? Grandmother is always squeezing people's hands, holding people's hands tightly.

Papa likes to hug Mama and also hold onto Anna.

And the Aunties like the pound yams because happiness gives them strength.

Well done if you managed to get them.

Give me a thumbs up if you did.

Fantastic.

So hearing about what makes each character happy are the main events in the story, making up the plot, so what happens in the story.

So you are going to now use the main events of the story to retell the story from the beginning where you are introduced to Anna, and then you can use these main events, introducing each family member to retell the story.

If you want, you could use your copy of the story to help you.

Can you pause the video now and off you go.

Fantastic, that was great retelling.

Did you manage to include all of the events, as well as introducing it as Anna in the beginning? So Anna living in Africa, looking up on her family members from a tree and then joining in with all of the things that they do to make their happiness grow.

Did you remember the plot of the story? Well done if you did, fantastic.

Let's move on to the next part of our lesson, the theme of happiness.

The story shows us that there are so many ways and reasons why someone might be happy and what they might do with their happiness and how it might make them feel.

A theme is a main idea of something.

Theme, so it is a main idea.

One theme in the story is happiness and how people show it in different ways.

It also shows us how we can keep our happiness and help it to grow.

Happiness is a type of emotion.

Another one of our key words, emotion.

An emotion is a feeling or mood of how we feel on the inside.

So happiness is quite a positive emotion.

It's a good emotion, it's a nice emotion.

When we feel something, it often leads to an action or doing something to show it.

So for example, if we are feeling the emotion of happiness, we might smile, dance or laugh.

If we're feeling the emotion of sadness, we might cry, ask for a hug or distract ourselves to try and not feel sad anymore.

If we are feeling the emotion of excitement, we might jump up and down, play a game or dance.

If we are feeling the emotion of anger, we might shout, take deep breaths to try and calm down or have some time to yourself to calm down.

So a feeling that we might have often leads to an action and some of those actions are trying to get rid of that emotion.

Whereas with happiness, we know from the story, they don't want to get rid of that feeling and they want to make it grow.

So I wonder if you can sort the emotions into positive and negative emotions.

So negative is an emotion that we don't want to keep onto.

So we've got positive and negative, and then the emotions are excitement, anger, sadness, happiness.

I wonder if you could sort them now? The positive emotions are and the negative emotions are, pause the video now, off you go.

Well done now is fantastic thinking.

Let's see if you've got them.

So we've got excitement is a positive emotion.

That's one that we want to keep if we're feeling excited about something.

Anger is a negative emotion.

So you might try and get rid of anger by taking some deep breaths or calming yourself down or having space to yourself.

Sadness is also a negative emotion.

It's not nice to have that feeling of sadness and happiness is another positive emotion, an emotion that we might try and keep onto or grow just like in the story, well done.

So this story teaches us that we can express that emotion in different ways.

It also teaches us that if we are feeling a positive emotion like happiness, we can grow that happiness by doing something that makes us happy, such as Grandfather counting, the cousins doing gymnastics or Uncle Tunde dancing.

When Anna hears about what makes them happy, that makes her even happier and her happiness grows.

So out of all of these options, counting, squeezing hands, pounding yams, doing gymnastics, dancing or hugging and holding onto each other, which one of these might you be most likely to do to keep you happy? Maybe you could say, "I would like to," pause the video and have a chat.

Off you go.

I love to hear lots of different ideas and that shows us that we all try and do different things to keep our happiness and it doesn't matter what they are as long as it's important to us and makes us happy.

I am going to tell you about a time when I felt happiness and what I did to help it to grow.

I felt happiness when I watched my friend perform in a show.

I helped my happiness to grow by dancing along to the show.

So I was really happy watching my friend because I was so proud of them.

But then to keep my happiness to grow, I danced in my seat and move along.

In the story, Anna's happiness grows by listening to all of the other people's way of making them happy and then making a song about it.

Now it's your turn to tell your partner an example of when you felt happiness and what you did to help it to grow.

Once you've done that, you can draw a picture of what you did and show on your face how you are feeling.

If you are feeling happy, what might your face look like? Maybe you'll draw a big smile.

Maybe you'll join your eyes wide.

Maybe you'll show what your body was doing to show happiness.

So you are going to talk about it first.

"I felt happiness when", and then you are going to say, "I helped my happiness to grow by", what you going to do? Have a think and then speak to the person next to you and draw your picture.

If you are feeling confident, you might also write a sentence to explain what you do to help your happiness to grow.

Can you pause the video now? Off you go.

Fantastic, well done that's really trying your best.

I love that you listen to other people's ideas.

Here is an example that I've heard.

I felt happiness when I came into school on my own for the first time.

That shows such bravery and strength.

So I can see why you felt happiness.

I helped my happiness to grow by making a card for the people that I love.

That's so lovely and that would definitely keep that happiness and spread your happiness to make other people happy.

I wonder, did you listen to somebody else's feeling of happiness and what did they say? Let's have a look at a few more examples.

I helped my happiness to grow by giving someone a hug.

That's lovely.

I helped my happiness to grow by telling someone a joke, to make them laugh, probably.

I helped my happiness to grow by drawing pictures of my favourite things.

I help my happiness to grow by telling someone that I love them.

I help my happiness to grow by looking at the nature around me.

I help my happiness to grow by hugging my favourite toy.

So hopefully you can see that there are so many different things that make us happy and that you can see it's so important to let your happiness grow and to spread it to others.

What's a fantastic lesson today.

It's really made me happy teaching you and thinking about all of the things that make us happy.

That shows how much we can learn from books and it's also told us that recalling events in the story help us to summarise the most important parts.

This story is quite different from traditional tales 'cause it does not have a clear beginning, middle, and end.

Instead, this story follows each family member and the discussions that the main character has with them.

This story shows that there are different ways to show happiness, which is the main theme in the book.

Thank you so much for learning with me today and I really hope you enjoyed it.

I hope to see you again soon, bye.