"Polar Bear, Polar Bear" is another one of my favorite books by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle. Like "Brown Bear" it has predictable text that makes it perfect for beginning readers. Using this book I like to work on the names of the animals, the sight words "I", "a" and "hear" and sentence structure.
When I do this book I usually spend an entire week on it, concentrating on something different each day, while building on the knowledge gained from the day before. On day one, we use the "I hear a...." board and a copy of the book.
We start by reading the story several times, taking note of the animals and the sounds they make. Most of the children have heard this story before and are familiar with it but they may be unfamiliar with the sounds of some of the animals. We often go to the internet to hear the real animals.
Once I'm sure that the children are comfortable with the story, I have them make the sentence "I hear a ......." as I read each page. At first I model the sentence along with them and then as they become more confident, they can do it by themselves. For children that cannot pick up the pieces, I hold them up and have them use eye gaze to make a choice.
Even at this early stage we work on punctuation.
To finish up on the first day, I have the children make a little book to take home or I send it home for homework if we run out of time. I have a couple of different versions depending on the abilities of my students. One, they just need to color, the second is a "fill in the blank" and in the last one the children need to trace the animal word. Sometimes we mix and match the pages. I have each student complete a page and we make a class book.