Egyptian Cinderella

The Egyptian Cinderella

Despite the change in  setting and the famous glass slippers being substituted by leather ones with toes of rose-red gold, your class will be familiar with this exotic version of Cinderella.

Similar to the original, there was a Greek slave girl named Rhodopis who married the Pharaoh Amasis. A trio of servant girls undertake the roles of the wicked stepsisters, a kindly master acts as the fairy godmother with a handsome pharoah filling the shoes of Prince Charming.

Main Focus: Clauses

Shirley Climo uses embedded clauses to make her sentences more complex and to add more detail for effect. We have gathered a range of sentences from the book for your class to study and see how this improves the sentences.

Your Year 3 / Year 4 class must identify the embedded clauses and also choose the most fitting embedded clauses to complete the sentences. A great guided reading lesson.

Your Ks1 class should be then given opportunities to write their own in a different context.

Main Focus: Vocabulary Extension

Your children are encouraged to extend their vocabulary by taking different words from the story and identifying a word close to the context it is used. They will then apply it to a new context below. 

This is a brilliant activity to help your KS2 children improve their vocabulary whilst exploring The Egyptian Cinderella story.

Main Focus: Comprehension

This is a comprehension from pages 1-4 of the story.

Your children will be challenged to:

• Reflect on the vocabulary used
• Locate answers and provide explanations
• Use evidence to support answers
• Give explanations linked to word class and punctuation
• Summarise 
• Infer linked to show not tell

and more…

Main Focus: Speech

This guided reading resource pack focuses on inverted commas and alternatives for ‘said’.

In this book, Shirley Climo uses a variety of speech verbs instead of said. Your class will use the selection of words given to complete the sentences from the story.

In the second part of the activity, your class will identify the words spoken in the sentences but the characters and decide where to place the inverted commas.

Main Focus: Tense - Modifying Verbs

This resource packs looks at how verbs can be modified depending on the tense and explores the rules. It also looks at alphabetical order.

There are so many rules for your children to remember and this resource build on their knowledge linked to the rules:

Main Focus: Past and Present Tense

This pack explores a generic Egyptian passage written discussing the afterlife which provides great knowledge for your class as well as having a literacy focus.

Your children must add in the past tense words to the passage and then they must write the present tense of the words given.

Main Focus: Word Class

In this guided reading pack, your class will read the extracts provided and identify examples of precise nouns, adjectives, powerful verbs and adverbs. 

This resource has been differentiated five ways as with all this book pack and helps some of your children by identifying the words for the children to organise into the word class and reducing the amount of word classes taken as a focus.

Main Focus: Simile

This resource can be used as a whole class lesson. Your children will look at how the author has made comparisons by using similes in the story. The similes have been gathered from the story for you to explore with your class.

You can also give your class some of the pages from the book and they can identify the similes as a group task before giving them this resource.

Once the children recognise and identify the similes, then can then write their own, using the same simile is a new context. 

Main Focus: Art - Winter Palace

This is a fantastic resource pack explores the artwork of Bridget Riley. Your class will explore the different colours used and identify/research what they think was the inspiration behind the colours.

In 1970, Riley visited Egypt and went to see the ancient tombs that reside there. She stayed at the luxurious hotel ‘Winter Palace’.

Riley was interested in colours and created the beautiful painting from all the colours that she could see during her visit.

Main Focus: Extra Tasks

The three extra tasks provided for this pack are:

1. We know the Egyptian girls wore clumsy sandals woven from papyrus and they were very jealous of Rhodopis’s new rose-red slippers. Your class will design some new sandals for them, creating a labelled diagram, detailing materials used.

2. Compare this version of the story to the original Cinderella.

3. We know that the Pharaoh is determined to find the owner of the slipper. Your children will create an advert to find who it belongs to, offering a reward and details about how to contact Amasis.

External Links

To accèss a range of external resources that we have gathered including:

• Egyptian Gods
• Story Animation
• Howard Carter
• King Tutunkamun
• Map of Egypt

and more…