Integrating Language Arts Using "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie"
http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=809
A lesson plan for Grades K–2 English Language Arts
This lesson from ReadWriteThink uses Laura Joffe Numeroff's If You Give a Mouse a Cookie to combine word-skill work with prediction and sequencing practice. Students learn about cause-effect relationships during a shared reading of the book. They then create story circles that display the events of the story and use these circles to retell the story to a peer. Finally the students compose their own stories, featuring themselves in the role of the mouse.
North Carolina Curriculum Alignment
English Language Arts (2004)
Grade 1
- Goal 2: The learner will develop and apply strategies and skills to comprehend text that is read, heard, and viewed.
- Objective 2.01: Read aloud independently with fluency and comprehension any text that is appropriately designed for emergent readers.
- Objective 2.02: Demonstrate familiarity with a variety of texts (storybooks, short chapter books, newspapers, telephone books, and everyday print such as signs and labels, poems, word plays using alliteration and rhyme, skits and short plays).
- Objective 2.03: Read and comprehend both fiction and nonfiction text appropriate for grade one using:
- prior knowledge.
- summary.
- questions.
- graphic organizers.
- Objective 2.04: Use preparation strategies to anticipate vocabulary of a text and to connect prior knowledge and experiences to a new text.
- Objective 2.05: Predict and explain what will happen next in stories.
- Objective 2.06: Self-monitor comprehension by using one or two strategies (questions, retelling, summarizing).
- Objective 2.07: Respond and elaborate in answering what, when, where, and how questions.
- Objective 2.08: Discuss and explain response to how, why, and what if questions in sharing narrative and expository texts.
- Objective 2.09: Read and understand simple written instructions.
- Goal 4: The learner will apply strategies and skills to create oral, written, and visual texts.
- Objective 4.05: Write and/or participate in writing by using an author's model of language and extending the model (e.g., writing different ending for a story, composing an innovation of a poem).
- Objective 4.06: Compose a variety of products (e.g., stories, journal entries, letters, response logs, simple poems, oral retellings).
Grade 2
- Goal 2: The learner will develop and apply strategies and skills to comprehend text that is read, heard, and viewed.
- Objective 2.01: Read and comprehend both narrative and expository text appropriate for grade two by:
- determining purpose (reader's and author's).
- making predictions.
- asking questions.
- locating information for specific reasons/purposes.
- recognizing and applying text structure.
- comprehending and evaluating author's decisions and word choice.
- determining fact and opinion.
- recognizing and comprehending figurative language.
- making inferences and drawing conclusions.
- Objective 2.02: Use text for a variety of functions, including literary, informational, and practical.
- Objective 2.03: Read expository materials for answers to specific questions.
- Objective 2.04: Pose possible how, why, and what if questions to understand and/or interpret text.
- Objective 2.05: Self-monitor own difficulties in comprehending independently using several strategies.
- Objective 2.06: Recall main ideas, facts and details from a text.
- Objective 2.07: Discuss similarities and differences in events, characters and concepts within and across texts.
- Objective 2.08: Interpret information from diagrams, charts, and maps.
- Objective 2.01: Read and comprehend both narrative and expository text appropriate for grade two by:
- Goal 4: The learner will apply strategies and skills to create oral, written, and visual texts.
- Objective 4.06: Plan and make judgments about what to include in written products (e.g., narratives of personal experiences, creative stories, skits based on familiar stories and/or experiences).
- Objective 4.07: Compose first drafts using an appropriate writing process:
- planning and drafting.
- rereading for meaning.
- revising to clarify and refine writing with guided discussion.
- Objective 4.08: Write structured, informative presentations and narratives when given help with organization.
Kindergarten
- Goal 2: The learner will develop and apply strategies and skills to comprehend text that is read, heard, and viewed.
- Objective 2.01: Demonstrate sense of story (e.g., beginning, middle, end, characters, details).
- Objective 2.02: Demonstrate familiarity with a variety of types of books and selections (e.g., picture books, caption books, short informational texts, nursery rhymes, word plays/finger plays, puppet plays, reenactments of familiar stories).
- Objective 2.03: Use preparation strategies to activate prior knowledge and experience before and during the reading of a text.
- Objective 2.04: Formulate questions that a text might answer before beginning to read (e.g., what will happen in this story, who might this be, where do you think this happens).
- Objective 2.05: Predict possible events in texts before and during reading.
- Objective 2.06: Understand and follow oral-graphic directions.
- Goal 4: The learner will apply strategies and skills to create oral, written, and visual texts.
- Objective 4.06: Write and/or participate in writing behaviors by using authors' models of language.



