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Playdates and Promise-keeping

Overview

Shinrai faces a dilemma between playing with her pals and going home early, as she promised her mother. This choose-your-own-ending skit exercises students’ creativity and teaches them the importance of promise-keeping and trustworthiness.

Materials

• Paper puppets, pre-cut (Worksheet 1)
• Crayons or colored pencils
• Popsicle sticks
• Glue (liquid, gel, or stick)

Handouts

• Promise-keeping Shinrai and Her Play Pals (paper puppets)
• Promise-keeping Shinrai and Her Play Pals (writing)

Procedure

1. Introductory Skit (5 minutes): Prepare your own paper puppets of Shinrai (trustworthiness/camel), Austus (respect/lion), and Karina (caring/kangaroo). Perform a brief skit of the three friends playing merrily when Shinrai suddenly remembers her promise to her mother to be home early. Her friends are having so much fun and urge Shinrai to stay. Torn between her friends and her promise to her mother, what will trustworthy Shinrai do? 

2. Class Discussion (10 minutes):

• What is Shinrai’s dilemma?
• Who are the stakeholders? Which characters are involved in this story?
• What would trustworthy Shinrai do?
• Why should Shinrai go home?
• What could improve the situation? What could Shinrai have done differently for a better outcome?

 3. Group Assignment (15 minutes):

• Divide the students into groups of three and distribute a set of pre-cut paper puppets to each group.
• Allow students to color and glue the popsicle sticks on their paper puppets.
• Have each group create their own ending to the introductory skit (older students should write their version of the ending on Worksheet 2; younger students will write their one-sentence endings on the board with help from teacher and classmates). What happens to the play date? What does Shinrai decide? How do the stakeholders react? Each group should prepare to share their ending with the class.

 4. Sharing Time (10 minutes): Select student groups to perform their own endings to the skit with paper puppets. Make sure to reinforce key vocabulary and character lesson by discussing the endings after each performance. For younger children, help students write their endings on the chalkboard, encouraging collaboration from the class.

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McREL standards

Language Arts

Standard 8. Uses listening and speaking strategies for different purposes.

Level I, Benchmark 2. Asks and responds to questions (e.g., about the meaning of a story, about the meaning of words or ideas).