The Shouting Girl: L6 Literal Retrieval

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

Reading comprehension (English Language and Literacy),

Level

Year 2,

Description

In this Year 2 Talk for Reading lesson, students practise literal retrieval by using details from The Shouting Girl to answer structured questions. The lesson supports monitoring and deepens reading comprehension through a whole-class discussion, visual cues, and a Q&A worksheet. Children are encouraged to explain how and where they found their answers in the text, strengthening confidence and accuracy in locating literal information.

Learning Intentions

• We are learning to retrieve key details in the story.

Successful Criteria

• I can recall what happened at the beginning, middle, and end of the story.
• I can answer questions using information directly from the book.
• I can explain where I found each answer.

Curriculum Alignment

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

Materials

The Shouting Girl by Steven Huynh
Reading comprehension worksheet

Instructions

Warm-up

Discuss: What happens at the beginning, middle, and end of the story?

Reading

Teacher models fluent reading of The Shouting Girl for the fifth time.
Encourage students to listen carefully and try to remember key events.

Q&A – Whole Class Discussion

Discuss the literal question bank.
1. What was Kim’s voice like?
2. When was Kim’s turn to lead?
3. What did Kim do when no one listened to her?
4. Who did Kim want to say sorry to?
5. Why did Kim want to say sorry to that person?
6. What did Jim’s safe place look like?
7. What did Jim do in the box to feel better?
8. What did the teacher say about anger?
9. What does shouting make people feel?
10. What did Kim’s parents sometimes do at home when they were angry?
Encourage students to explain how they found their answer and point to the page or image as evidence.

Activity – Reading Comprehension Worksheet

Hand out the worksheet with literal retrieval questions.
Support students in using the text to locate information and write their answers.
Optional: pair up students to discuss their answers and check each other’s responses.

Downloads

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Material contents	1 x Lesson 6 (pdf)	1 x Lesson 6 (editable PowerPoint) 1 x Literal retrieval worksheet
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