Bear Sees Colors - Day One

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I've been doing some research lately about different types of communication systems.  I have always made communication boards up for the different activities we do in class.  The boards are all different from each other, contain different vocabulary and the vocabulary that is the same, may not be in the same place on the different boards.

Recently I've thinking a lot about core and fringe vocabulary.  Core vocabulary includes the main words that we use all the time.  I relate it to the Dolch and Fry sight word lists.  These are the ones we see most often in writing and use when we are speaking.  Fringe vocabulary is all the extra words that are specific to a certain text or environment.  For example, the kitchen.  You are more likely to use the words "bake", "cook", "oven" and "flour" when doing a cooking activity in the kitchen.

I decided to try something new when designing my next communication board for our next set of books.  I wanted to do a series on the Bear books by Karma Wilson.  I love her Bear books and the kids do too.

I decided to start with the book "Bear Sees Colors".  This book is great for my beginning communicators and is wonderful for working on colour recognition.  We would be reading the book every day for five days and working on different activities related to the book each day.

This is the communication board that I made.  The core vocabulary is in the middle and the fringe vocabulary is around the outside.

The pictures are ordered so that the children can create sentences.  The fringe vocabulary on the sides and top flip up to reveal more vocabulary.

On day one we concentrated on working on the sentence "Bear sees....".   I encouraged the children to point to each word to make a sentence as we went through the book.  If the children couldn't/wouldn't point to the pictures, I modeled the sentence for them.

For my students who were too overwhelmed by all the core vocabulary, I made a panel to cover most of the words and leave the target word visible.

Once we read through the book, we made our own bear book.

I had a few different sheets depending on the fine motor skills of the children.  Some have more ability to colour than others.  For those that could colour, I had them colour in Bear.

I then had them pick a colour and had them colour their page with that colour.

To finish their sentence, I had them cut out (or had it cut out for them if they couldn't do it) the colour that they picked and glue it in the sentence on their page.

They also added Bear to top of their page.

Some children were able to draw a picture, and if they could, I had them draw a picture of something that colour.

Once all the pictures were done, we made a book by stapling them all together.  If you want, you could laminate it and put it out for the children to read again and again.

Don't forget to grab a copy of the book.  You'll need it for this unit.