Polar Bear - Day One

"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.

Hungry Pigs Core Boards

When I got "Ten Hungry Pigs" in my Scholastic book order a couple of months ago, I instantly fell in love with it.  It's cute, funny and perfect for working on counting skills.  I knew this was the next book I wanted to adapt for my students.  

Core vocabulary is at the heart of all we do.  It's so much easier to work activities around core vocabulary (those set of words that we use most often) and add some fringe (those words specific to an activity) than to make theme or activity boards.  This way the children begin to learn where certain words are on their boards and learn to communicate faster.

When I do shared reading activities with the children, I read the same book everyday but vary the activities each day.

On the first day I have the children work on making the sentence "I see # pigs" by pointing to the words on their board.

We then make a large class book.  Each child makes one page and then we bind it together.  Some children are ready for the number word and some are working on the numerals.  The aim of this activity is to work on sentence structure.  Just because my students can't talk doesn't mean we can't be working on proper sentences.

On the second day we worked on making a big chart about what food each pig liked.  Again, we worked on making sentences and putting words together.

The children then made individual books to demonstrate their learning.  They completed the sentence and added the picture of the food item.  For children who are able to draw, I had them draw a picture of the food item.  For child who are non-verbal and have little fine motor skills, I held up two food item choices and had them eye gaze to the one they wanted.  I then used hand-over-hand to help them glue their choice into their book.

On day three we talked about personal preferences and what the children themselves liked or didn't like. These types of questions are great for getting to know the likes and dislikes of our class.  Don't worry about the vocabulary being exact on their communication boards.  "Not like" is perfectly acceptable.  Remember, we want them to use what they have to get their point across.  There isn't room on the boards for every negative.  Teaching the children to use the "not" symbol, opens up a wide range of options when it is combined with other words ( ie. "not happy" rather than "unhappy").

On the forth day we talked about what each pig put on the pile in order.  In this way we are retelling the story in order.  The children have practiced using a lot of the vocabulary already.

On the last day I concentrated on asking the children questions about the story.  It's important to practice answering questions that require more than a "yes/no" answer.  I tried to include some fringe vocabulary that would lend itself to questions.  The response sheet is made up of yes/no questions so that we practice both.

I hope you enjoy this book as much as I have.

Bear Sees Colors - Day Three

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It's day 3 of our "Bears Sees Colors" unit.  

On this day we are introducing Characters.

I showed the children this poster of the characters in the book.

We then talked about the characters being the "Who" in the story.

As we read the story, we posted pictures of the animals on a chart.

Once we finished the chart I had the children make individual books.

I had coloured and black and white pictures printed off for the children depending on the skills of the child.

For my students that have fine motor skills, I had them colour in the pictures.

I laid them out beside the book so they had a choice to pick from.

Some children could handle 5 choices, and some could only handle 2. 

As the children completed their book, I had them read the sentence to me.

When the children were finished, they took their books home to read to their families.

Don't forget to grab the book.  You are going to need it for these activities.

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.