The Shouting Girl: L5 Building Vocabulary

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, such as calm corners, through interactions with friends in a classroom, establishing help-seeking strategies in such situations (AC9HP2P05 – Health and Physical Education, Years 1 and 2).

With its poetic language and engaging illustrations, The Shouting Girl helps students understand how rhyme and rhythm create cohesion in a text. 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

Vocabulary expansion (English Language and Literacy),

Level

Year 2,

Description

This Year 2 talk for reading lesson focuses on vocabulary building through The Shouting Girl. Students use images and sentence creation to understand unfamiliar words in the text.

Learning Intentions

• We are learning to understand the meaning of unknown words in the text.

Successful Criteria

• I can guess unknown words using images.
• I can define and experiment with the new vocabulary.

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

AC9E2LA09 9.0 (English Language and Literacy Year 2): Experiment with and begin to make conscious choices of vocabulary to suit the topic

• selecting vocabulary appropriate to the topic to replace everyday language
• discussing new vocabulary encountered in learning area texts
• exploring language used to describe characters in narratives, including nouns; for example, “magician”, “wizard”, “sorcerer”, and adjectives such as “gentle”, “timid” or “frightened”
• identifying words from First Nations Australians’ languages relevant to a topic

Materials

The Shouting Girl by Steven Huynh
Vocabulary slides with images and examples
Mini whiteboards or student notebooks

Instructions

Reading and Vocabulary Discussion

Re-read The Shouting Girl slowly, line by line.
Pause and guess the meaning of the key words: tremble, howl, caterwaul, dread, fury.
Support students with visual aids and child-friendly definitions.
Show examples and non-examples using vocabulary slides.

Guessing from Images

For each word, show a picture and ask: “What do you think is happening here?”
Encourage students to link visual cues to the word’s meaning.

Exploring Meaning and Use

Display the new words on a board or wall.
Invite students to say the words out loud and use them in a sentence orally.
Clarify meanings and refine word understanding with peer examples.

Activity – Sentence Writing

Write their own sentences using each word, with teacher or peer support as needed.
Optional: draw a matching image to reinforce understanding.

Extensions

Students act out the vocabulary words in a game of ‘Word Charades’.
Create a class ‘Word Wall’ with drawings and definitions of new vocabulary.

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