Four complete English units of work designed for Year 1 but easily adaptable for Reception or Year 2. Includes lesson powerpoints, differentiated resources and planning documents.

I’m no huge fan of Brave. I do know a few little girls who love it to bits, mainly because of the archery. But there’s something not quite right about the story arc, and I feel it’s a bit cheap to play the princes for laughs. Not only is it funny and cute, it teaches children that no matter what, they don't have to compromise their boundaries and they don't have to conform to society's expectations." (From a 5-star review) Lesson 4 - Use vocabulary built over the week to write a character description, focusing on choosing interesting adjectives to create expanded noun phrases. What I liked about this story is that it was very unique and not conventional. It depicts a princess in a manner that is not common in pupils’ eyes. When children think of a princess they like to think about someone beautiful and graceful and kind, this princess is none of those things. Babette Cole has been very creative in using humour in this story, e.g. the names of the princes and the name of the princess.

Teaching Ideas and Resources:

Princess Smartypants is rebellious, fiercely independent and perfectly happy to be single. Clad in dungarees and muddy wellies, she loves caring for her menagerie of unusual pets, including a selection of giant slugs, snails, spiders and dragons. Frustratingly, suitors are forever turning up to win her hand and she is under constant pressure from her parents to smarten up and settle down. A four lesson unit of work based around the book Princess Smartypants by Babette Cole. A read through of this book can be found on YouTube if you don’t have a physical copy. The outcome by the end of a unit is a character description. The unit can be used to introduce adjectives. It was with Beware of the Vet (1982) that her zany sense of humour and delight in the absurd was first fully unleashed. The account of the mayhem that follows when Mr MacPlaster, the vet, mistakes cow hormones for aspirin and grows horns and a tail was a trailblazer for many of Babette’s subsequent titles. Taking a similar “what if?” premise, The Trouble With Mum (1983) stars a mum who is a witch and focuses on the deep and hilarious embarrassment that this causes at the school gates. It is a simple problem captured brilliantly by Babette in the best tradition of great picture books, by contrasting sparing, deadpan text with frothily inventive illustrations.

Steinem then goes on to make a great job of turning Sigmund Freud into Phyllis Freud, with all of the misogynistic and historically dangerous ideas reversed, in a world where women hold the power instead of men; where the uterus is revered rather than the phallus. STORY STRUCTURE OF PRINCESS SMARTYPANTS Types of Archetypal Journeys Blah blah alternative princess cliche of forgoing marriage as girl empowerment; I think girls who wanna get married will be fine unless this is the only piece of media they ever consumeMy daughter enjoys this book and thinks it’s very funny. She enjoys pretending to be a princess herself, so I like the fact that it gives a more balan... Princess Smartypants is famous for her independence. She's never wanted to marry and certainly doesn't need the help of any silly prince to rule her kingdom of Totaloonia.