The Shouting Girl: L2 Making Predictions

The Book

The Shouting Girl

Written by Steven Huynh, illustrated by Gehenna Pham, published by Steven De GC

The poem follows a young girl who struggles to express herself calmly, often shouting when she feels frustrated or unheard. Through her journey, she learns to recognise and understand her emotions (AC9HPFP03, AC9HP2P03 – Foundation to Year 2, Health and Physical Education) and works to develop positive strategies for expressing her thoughts and feelings in respectful ways (AC9HPFP02, AC9HP2P02 – Foundation to Year 2, Health and Physical Education).

The story also encourages children to explore characters’ perspectives and emotional responses, fostering empathy (AC9HP2P01 – Health and Physical Education, Years 1 and 2). It helps them define safe and unsafe environments through interactions with friends in a classroom, establishing help-seeking strategies in such situations (AC9HP2P05 – Health and Physical Education, Years 1 and 2). Additionally, the book highlights how environments, such as a calm corner or designated green boxes, can be designed to support emotional regulation and meet classroom needs (AC9TDEFK01, AC9TDE2K01 – Foundation to Year 2, Design and Technologies).

With its poetic language and engaging illustrations, The Shouting Girl helps students understand how rhyme and rhythm create cohesion in poems. It also explores how words and images shape settings and characters, along with other literary features such as lists of three and similes.

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Resource creator

Steven Huynh

Subject

English Language and Literacy, Health and Physical Education,

Level

Year 2,

Description

In this Talk for Reading lesson for Year 2, students deepen their comprehension by making predictions during a guided read-aloud of The Shouting Girl. This reading activity also aligns with the Australian Curriculum for Health and Physical Education, helping students explore big emotions and behaviour in line with AC9HP2P03.

Learning Intentions

• We are learning to make predictions about the text.

Successful Criteria

• I can make predictions about what might happen next in the story.
• I can explain why I think something might happen based on what I see or hear.
• I can add new wonderings to our Wonderings Page.

Curriculum Alignment

AC9E2LA08 9.0 (English Language and Literacy Year 2): Understand that images add to or multiply the meanings of a text

• identifying images and graphics in a text that add ideas or information not included in the written text; for example, a map or table in a factual text or an illustration in a story, which gives clues about the setting
• identifying visual representations of characters’ actions, reactions, speech and thought processes in narratives, and considering how these images add to or multiply the meaning of accompanying words

AC9E2LY02 9.0 (English Language and Literacy Year 2): Use interaction skills when engaging with topics, actively listening to others, receiving instructions and extending own ideas, speaking appropriately, expressing and responding to opinions, making statements, and giving instructions

• exploring ways to comment on what others say, including using sentence starters such as “I like the way you …”, “I agree that …”, “I have a different thought …”, “I’d like to say something different …”
• demonstrating appropriate listening behaviours, responding to and paraphrasing a partner’s contribution to a discussion; for example, in think pair share activities
• asking relevant questions and making connections with personal experiences and the contributions of others
• understanding how to disagree or respectfully offer an alternative

AC9E2LY05 9.0 (English Language and Literacy Year 2): Use comprehension strategies such as visualising, predicting, connecting, summarising, monitoring and questioning to build literal and inferred meaning

• listening for specific information and providing key facts or points from an informative or persuasive text
• listening and responding to detailed instructions
• integrating information from print, images and prior knowledge to make supportable inferences
• identifying the main idea of a text
• predicting vocabulary that is likely to be in a text, based on the topic and the purpose of the text; for example, predicting that “station” and “arrive” would be in a text recounting a train journey
• using prior knowledge to make and confirm predictions when reading a text
• using graphic organisers to represent the connections between characters, order of events or sequence of information

AC9HP2P03 9.0 (Health and Physical Education Year 1,Year 2): Identify how different situations influence emotional responses

• recognising own emotions and demonstrating ways to manage how they express their emotions in different situations
• exploring self-regulation strategies to manage emotional responses
• identifying situations that may trigger strong emotional responses in themselves and others, and recognising the impact the responses can have on others
• identifying how someone might feel, think and act during an emergency through role-play and imaginative play
• predicting how a person or character might be feeling based on the words they use, their facial expressions and body language
• recognising how self and others are feeling in a range of situations

Materials

The Shouting Girl by Steven Huynh
Butcher’s paper with the Wonderings Page from Lesson 1
Markers or sticky notes (for guided dialogic reading questions)
List of dialogic reading questions

Instructions

Important Note to Teachers!

If you think the four pages before the last page (about parents arguing at home) are sensitive to your children, please gently skip them.
If you see them as an opportunity to discuss anger issues in adults (as adults are still learning too), please have ‘protective interrupting’ strategy in mind in case children tend to disclose information in front of the class.

Tuning-in

Revisit students’ initial predictions from the previous lesson.

Dialogic Reading (Prediction)

Introduce prediction as a reading strategy: “We’re going to try to guess what happens next in the story by using clues from the pictures and the words.”
Read aloud The Shouting Girl (model fluent reading).
Use the following questions at key points in the story to encourage predictions and reasoning:
1. What do you think is happening?
2. Do you think if it’s Friday that day?
3. What do you think she does in response?
4. What is the Zen corner? What does the girl do in the Zen corner?
5. Uh oh! What do you think is happening next?
6. Do you think the boy will be upset? Where do you think he’s running into?
7. Why does he run to that green box?
8. Do you think if the teacher is checking on the girl as well?
9. What do you think the girl wonders?
10. (optional) Why do you think the adults are arguing?

Reflection

Discuss:
- How was the story different from your original thoughts?
- What happened in the story?
- What’s the story all about? Prompt: “Is shouting at people the right thing to do?”
Guide students to reflect on character actions and their own experiences.

Activity – Add to Wonderings Page

Revisit the class Wonderings Page.
Ask: “Is there anything that still makes you wonder?” (e.g., What would Kim do after the incident? Why didn’t Jim shout?)
Make some space for “new wonderings” and record student responses.

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