Teacher's Notes: Sir Gabriel and the King's Riddle
This story of a knight's adventure revolves around a popular riddle. It is also a longer story, broken down into chapters. This story starts to introduce some richer vocabulary.
A good way to introduce the story is to give some examples of popular riddles. For example, what has three eyes and one leg? Teach the words riddle, guess, clue, hint, and solve. Give them clues until they get the answer - a stoplight. Then, try the famous Sphinx riddle - what walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening? (A person - as a baby he crawls, as an adult he walks, and as an old man he walks with a cane.) Then ask your students if they know any riddles.
Another way to introduce this story is to talk about video games. Do your students play games in which their characters have to complete quests? Do they need skills, weapons, magic? You can say this story is about knights, like the Arthurian legend. This knight is on a quest to solve a riddle.
After teaching the new words, you might want to read the first chapter together and then stop to get the students' guesses as to what the answer to the riddle might be. When they read the whole story, they will find out. As an additional activity, you can have students create their own riddles by thinking of an ordinary object and trying to write clever clues about it. Collect their riddles and read them aloud, having the class guess.
New Words
excited
announce
eager
knight
crown
command
riddle
clever
contain oneself
stern
patient
solve
rule
just (fair)
determined
mumble
nonsense
reach
bubble
poison
sigh
waste
try
risky
rotting
beware
guardian
joyful
shrink
hopeless
tears
boom
recognize
search
discover
howl
except
correct
silence
bog
take (to take so long)
shake head
Worksheet Answers
Synonyms: announce – to say to a big group of people; command – to order; riddle – a difficult question, a puzzle; clever – intelligent; stern – strict; solve – to find the answer; mumble – to speak unclearly; beware – be careful; joyful – happy
Synonyms (second group): eager – happy about something in the future; patient – waiting calmly; just – fair and honest; nonsense – words that mean nothing; reach – to come to, arrive at; risky – dangerous; shrink – to get smaller; hopeless – without hope; boom – to say loudly; discover – to find something new; howl – yell angrily; correct – right
Sentences: 1. try, 2. recognize, 3. determined, 4. except, 5. rotting, 6. waste
Match with pictures: (left to right) knight, crown, bubbles, poison, tears
Sentences (continued): 7. announced, 8. excited, 9. crown, 10. mumbles, 11. stern, 12. poison, 13. Beware, 14. clever, 15. risky, 16. joyful, 17. shrink, 18. sighed, 19. bubble, 20. reached, 21. solve
