Reading and responding to 'Please Mrs Butler' by Allan Ahlberg
I can give a personal response to the poem and perform it.
Reading and responding to 'Please Mrs Butler' by Allan Ahlberg
I can give a personal response to the poem and perform it.
These resources will be removed by end of Summer Term 2025.
Lesson details
Key learning points
- Allan Ahlberg is one of Britain’s most popular and successful children’s writers and is known for his fun storytelling.
- ‘Please Mrs Butler’ is a poem about a child asking their teacher for help.
- ‘Please Mrs Butler’ is written as a conversation between two characters and can be performed in a pair.
- Performing a poem using expression and gestures will help to express to an audience how a character is feeling.
Keywords
Character - a person or animal in a piece of fiction writing
Expression - reading with feelings and emotion to bring the poem to life
Gesture - a movement that helps express an idea or meaning
Common misconception
Pupils may find it hard to work together as a pair to perform the poem.
Teach pupils that performing 'Please Mrs Butler' as a pair will help to create the scene and express how the characters are feeling. Model with another adult how to work together to perform and react to what the other one is saying.
To help you plan your year 2 english lesson on: Reading and responding to 'Please Mrs Butler' by Allan Ahlberg, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...
To help you plan your year 2 english lesson on: Reading and responding to 'Please Mrs Butler' by Allan Ahlberg, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs.
The starter quiz will activate and check your pupils' prior knowledge, with versions available both with and without answers in PDF format.
We use learning cycles to break down learning into key concepts or ideas linked to the learning outcome. Each learning cycle features explanations with checks for understanding and practice tasks with feedback. All of this is found in our slide decks, ready for you to download and edit. The practice tasks are also available as printable worksheets and some lessons have additional materials with extra material you might need for teaching the lesson.
The assessment exit quiz will test your pupils' understanding of the key learning points.
Our video is a tool for planning, showing how other teachers might teach the lesson, offering helpful tips, modelled explanations and inspiration for your own delivery in the classroom. Plus, you can set it as homework or revision for pupils and keep their learning on track by sharing an online pupil version of this lesson.
Explore more key stage 1 english lessons from the Humorous poetry unit, dive into the full secondary english curriculum, or learn more about lesson planning.
Equipment
You need a copy of the poem ‘Please Mrs Butler’ in the 1984 Puffin edition of ‘Please Mrs Butler: The Timeless School Poetry Collection’ written by Allan Ahlberg for this lesson.
Licence
Lesson video
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