Look and listen: Exploring the five senses

This group of shared reading lessons is based on the book Look by Jillian Cutting. They are designed to be used as a part of an integrated classroom unit on the five senses.

A lesson plan for grade K English Language Arts and Science

Learn more

• Wright Group Educational website for teachers
• Shared Reading An instructional model for shared reading

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Related topics

• Learn more about English language arts and reading.

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Learning outcomes

Students will:

• match words one–one with finger pointing and visually scan across text.
• develop their understanding of quotation marks, periods, and exclamation marks.
• demonstrate an understanding of story by creating a class innovation of the book Look by Jillian Cutting.

Teacher planning

Time required for lesson

5 days

Materials/resources

• Look by Jillian Cutting (big book)
• pointer
• text and punctuation marks from story written on individual index cards
• sentence strips
• pocketchart
• drawing paper
• crayons
• pencils
• markers
• large construction paper
• book rings or book binder to finish innovated big book

Technology resources

• Tape recorder
• Blank cassette tape

Pre-activities

Students should be involved in an integrated unit of study designed to introduce the five senses. Students should be familiar with big books, poems, and songs as components of a shared reading program.

Activities

Day One

1. Review with students the five senses. Discuss the title of the book and ask students what part of their body they use to look or see. In addition to discussing the title, explore the cover, author, illustrator, and title page. Ask students to identify the main characters in the story.
2. Do a picture walk through the book with students. On each page, talk about what the birds are looking at and ask students to make predictions about what the birds will do about what they see. Students should confirm predictions as the story progresses. Point out the different punctuation marks in the book (quotation marks, periods, exclamation marks) and define the function of these marks to the students.
3. Tell students that you would like them to use their eyes to look for some special words in the book. The first word you want them to find is the word “look.” Ask students to predict what letter the word “look” begins with (stretch the word as you say it for the students). Ask different students to come up to the book and use a pointer to find the word “look” on each page. After finding the word “look,” follow the same procedure to find the word “said.”
4. Read the book to the students, pointing under the first letter of each word as you read. Encourage students to join you in reading the text.

Day Two

1. Prior to the lesson, prepare individual index cards with the following words and punctuation marks on them (each index card contains one word/punctuation mark, and each word/punctuation mark is written only once!).
   

   Look		said		the
   birds		Dogs		Cats
   Children		Bread		.
   ,		“ ”		!

2. Reread the book with the students. Draw special attention while reading to the punctuation marks. Talk briefly about the fact that quotation marks are at both the beginning and the end of the birds’ speech.
3. Pass out index cards, one to each student. Reread the book again with the class asking the students with the words/punctuation marks that match the text on the page to stand up in front of the group (see if they can put themselves in the correct order!). Have the class “read the kids.”
4. Follow the same procedure for each page of the book (many of the students will be able to stay where they are as the pattern of the book continues).
5. After reading the book once, collect the cards and redistribute them so that everyone in the class gets at least one turn to “be the words.”

Day Three

1. Prior to this lesson, prepare sentence strips that say “Listen, said the _____________.” (leave plenty of blank space at the end of the strip).
2. Reread the book with the students.
3. Tell the students that the class is going to write a new version of the story together and that your class book will be called Listen.
4. Ask the students to think of who they would like the main characters in their book to be (perhaps take suggestions and ask the class to vote on their favorite).
5. After the class has decided on the main characters, ask them to think of things that these characters could hear in the book. Remind students that they will be using their sense of hearing so they should choose things for the characters to hear that have interesting sounds.
6. After the students have decided on the characters and the objects that will be heard, the text is ready to be created. Fill in the sentence strips with the students’ ideas and place them in a pocketchart.
7. Read the innovated story with the class.

Day Four

(If your class has not worked on illustrating an innovated big book before, this can be a challenging process. This step may take more than one day and will require lots of teacher modeling, problem solving, and patience.)

1. Reread the students’ innovated story, Listen.
2. Tell the students that they will work together in groups to create illustrations for the new book. Have the students decide as a group how many main characters there will be in the illustrations (for example, if students choose bears as the main characters in their book, there needs to be consensus on the number of bears in each illustration). Also show the students how the illustrations in the original book stretch across two pages. Talk to students about spacing their illustrations across two pieces of drawing paper as well. You will need to model this!
3. Allow the students to select the illustration they would like to work on or create groups ahead of time.
4. After students move into these groups, distribute drawing paper and ask the groups to discuss their plan for drawing. After groups have decided what they will draw, where on the page it will be, and who will draw the different pieces, give the groups pencils and allow them to begin drawing.
5. Once the drawings are complete, have students get crayons and color their illustrations.
6. After the pictures have been colored, use black markers to outline the figures or, depending on their fine motor abilities, have the students outline them.

Day Five

1. Prior to this lesson, mount the students’ illustrations with the innovated text on pieces of large construction paper. Laminate and bind the pages of the class book.
2. Read the students’ innovated book, Listen, as a group. Celebrate the students’ hard work on their illustrations.
3. On a cassette, record the students reading the book as a group.
4. Place the tape and the new book in the listening center for student use.

Assessment

The objectives for this lesson have been met if the teacher observes students:

• participating in group readings of the big books
• locating given sight words in text
• appropriately pointing to text independently during center time while listening to the innovated book on tape
• successfully working cooperatively within a small group to complete an illustration

Supplemental information

Please see the websites listed under links for further information about implementing a shared reading program in a primary classroom.

Comments

This lesson is written for whole group instruction, but it can easily be adapted for small group guided reading instruction. The lesson can be extended to include individually written innovations.