Shel Silverstein Bio

Shel Silverstein is a famous American poet, but also known for his work as a songwriter, composer, cartoonist and author. He has a wide variety of books out and is very popular especially with the children. As a child, I had all of his collections of poems and read them constantly. In the first grade classroom, that I observe it, they have chosen quite a few of Shel Silverstein's poems to recite often. He has a very laid back style and a great sense of humor in his poems. His writings began while he served in the U.S. Army, he would draw cartoons for the the military newspaper. Silverstein accomplished a lot between his writings and music, but he will be mostly remembered for his unforgettable works in children's poetry. Children today, still are growing up reading his poems.

Bartholomew and the Oobleck- Lesson Plan

*Instructional Objective (measurable)

State what students should be able to do after completing the lesson. Be sure to align your objective to the TEKS and your assessment. Use only the formats that have been discussed in class.

1. Students will be able to observe Oobleck and compare it to the movements of solids and liquids.

2. Students will be able to list the properties of solids and liquids and compare them to the properties of Oobleck.

Rationale

Why are you teaching this lesson? What is the purpose of this lesson?

Students will become familiar with the states of matter, specifically solids and liquids. Also, children’s literature will be incorporated by reading the book, Bartholomew and the Oobleck by Dr. Seuss.

*Teaching Procedure

Within this section you should provide details for what is planned. Describe instructional strategies. Keep in mind to use cooperative learning, methods of inquiry or investigation when possible. You may feel the need to rearrange, omit or add additional sections due to the lesson style you are using. This is appropriate and should be done.

a. Focus (Also called motivation, set-up or engagement)

Include something to capture student interest and motivate them for learning. This may be in the form of a question or doing a demonstration. Be creative but make sure it connects to the overall lesson objective(s). Make sure to address learner’s prior knowledge.

· Begin the lesson by introducing some principles of solids and liquids.

Solids	Liquids
Has definite shape.	Does not have definite shape.
Has definite volume.	Has definite volume.
Has definite mass.	Has definite mass.

· Explain that because a liquid does not have a definite shape, this means that it will take on the shape of its container.

· After discussing the principles of the two, show the cover of Bartholomew and the Oobleck and allow students to guess what the Oobleck will be based on the illustration.

All directions and explanations of the lesson should appear in this section. Indicate how the activity should be done. Include details for what is planned, questions for understanding, and all activities that occur as a group during the beginning half of the lesson.

· Read the book Bartholomew and the Oobleck with the class.

· While reading, ask questions according to the illustrations. For example, when the Oobleck appears in the book, ask students to describe it based on what they see. Some answers could include, “It looks like rain”, or “It looks sticky”. Also point out words provided in the story that tell us about the Oobleck. For example, one part of the story says it’s like “greenish molasses”.

· Once the book is finished, explain to students that they will be working with their very own Oobleck. Refer back to when they guessed what the Oobleck would be and inform students that it is possible for a substance to have properties of both a solid and a liquid.

b. Practice (how will the children practice the concepts)

Provide independent/group practice. If students are exploring and investigating an activity first, you may allow students to explain results, follow with questions, and then provide necessary content information or expected solutions based on student experiences and questions. Be sure and include questions from a variety of Bloom’s levels that you will ask as you monitor students as well as modifications that will make the practice successful for all students

· Refer back to the focus activity and refresh students on the concepts of solids and liquids. Have students give examples of things for both categories. Answers for solids could include a table, a car, a book, etc… Answers for liquids could include water, milk, paint, etc…

· Provide students with pre-made Oobleck in plastic bags. Allow students to freely explore the properties of the Oobleck. It is safe to touch and put your hands in, although it can get a bit messy (but it washes off easily with water).

· Have students describe to you some of the words they think of after experimenting with the Oobleck. Do any of these words or descriptions fit perfectly with properties of solids or liquids? Where the students correct in their initial guesses of what they thought the Oobleck would be? Would you say the Oobleck is both a liquid and a solid?

c. Going Further (Also called extensions or elaboration)

Suggest ways to extend the activity for learners. Indicate what learners could do to apply the concepts and process skills learned to new situations. This can be used as extended activities for students who complete work or are ready to move on. No new information is taught here—learners are applying what they have learned in the lesson to new context.

· One option for extending this lesson could be allowing the students to work in making the Oobleck on their own. Instead of providing students with the pre-made bags, you could give the students the opportunity to really experiment with the substance.

· For making the Oobleck, provide students with something the mix in, a pie pan would work great. There isn’t an exact science to the making of Oobleck; just use cornstarch, water and a little bit of food coloring until you reach the desired consistency. Generally more cornstarch will be used than water to make a good batch.

· Also, provide students with a little bit of trivia. Can they think of something that can be a liquid at one time, and then become a solid, or vice versa? If they answer “ice” discuss the difference that temperature can make. What does it take to freeze water or melt ice?

d. Closure

Bring the lesson to a close. Restate the instructional objective. You may want to or have your students summarize the activities, or you may ask students to respond to questions to check for student understanding of the basic concepts addressed by the lesson.

As a review the teacher could ask the students what the three types of matter are and their characteristics. Also see if the kids could make a list on the board of examples of the different types of matter and see how many they could come up with. Lastly the teacher could even ask if they changed the experiment by adding more water… what would happen to the Oobleck, or if there was more starch added…

Modifications

Modifications should be included throughout your lesson. It is helpful to highlight the modifications within your procedure. In this section, you should add suggestions for what you will do to re-teach the lesson or additionally modify within the lesson for students who are having difficulty understanding concepts or skills taught in the lesson. Be sure to include behavioral and academic modifications for a variety of levels of learners (including G/T).

For modifications when discussing the elements of solids, liquids and gases the teacher could bring in some visuals. For example, he/she should could show how water can become solid when its frozen, liquid when it melts and than a gas. For students that need help making the Oobleck, they could work in partners and help each other.

*Assessment (Evaluation)

Explain how you plan to assess the learner’s mastery of objectives. Include any materials that are needed. Note: The assessment component does not have to be an additional activity. It may be something done/created during your lesson that can be evaluated for objective mastery (ex. Journal entry, graphic organizer, worksheet, observation and questioning).

The Impact of Childrens Literature

Many people may not think that reading to a young child can have an impact, but in reality the affects are incredible. I know as a child, my parents were big on reading to me, and by the time I was starting to read it became a lot more natural. The question is though, how soon to you start? In a recent class of mine, a young mom came in and spoke to us about how she started reading to her son at birth. She brought her son into class and he is just 2 years of age and you could already see the impact that it had on him. He absolutely loves books and can sit down for hours and be read to. For those of you who may not know, a two year old rarely can sit and do one thing for longer than about 10 minutes. Not only would he sit and listen, but he was very engaged into the story and loved interacting with the books. Some of his favorite books, were the Eric Carle ones and ones that would pop up and have different textures. Seeing this made me realize how important it is to start reading to children at a young age and how much it can affect them later on especially in school.

Response to Poem's Lecture

I thought it was interesting in class on Friday March 7, when we began discussing poems. I grew up loving poems, especially the Shel Silverstein collections. It was neat to talk about Mother Goose rhymes, because those were some of the first things that were ever read to me. I did not know that they were uniquely English and that John Newberry had attached the name Mother Goose to them. I also had not really ever thought of the difference between nonsense verse and humorous verse. After the discussion, it made me interested to go back and look at some the familiar poems and see if I could differentiate between the two. Poems are a great way to encourage reading with young children. It expands their vocabulary and allows them to pick out patterns in the words as well as they are just entertaining.

** Goodnight Moon **

One of my all time favorite stories as a child was Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. A lot of children grew up with this story and it is well known for its colorful and appealing illustrations. It is a great book for beginner readers, because it uses a lot of simple words and has pictures to go along with it. It uses a lot of adjetives and the illustrations correlate well with the words, so it is fun for kids to match the words with pictures. It is neat because each page alternates colored pages with black and white, so you could start reading this book to a small infant. I would strongly encourage it for parents to read it to their children at a young age. I still love this book even as an adult!

Curious George

When teaching a child how to read, it is important to not only teach how to read the text, but also the parts of a book, and how actually how to read it. A great beginning reader is the Curious George series by Margret Rey and Alan J. Shalleck. These books are based off a TV series, but they seem to be very popular with the young children. Also when teaching children how to read, it is important to stress the literary elements. In the book, Curious George Goes to School, is a great book to start off with, because it would be easy for kids to relate to. It is a story about George’s, the monkey, first day of school and how it does not start off too smoothly. In art class, George had kind of made a mess of things and all the art work was scattered all through the classroom. At first George was very sad, but at the end of the story it ended up being a good thing, because they found the missing artwork. It is a good story, of how sometimes things might not start off all that great, but in the end it worked out for the better.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom was a childhood favorite of mine. It had been awhile since I had last read it, and I had forgotten how much I loved it. It is a great book to help young children learn their alphabet and it puts it in a creative way, in which it goes through the letters without the children even realizing. It also has a great rhythm to it, so it is an easy story for children to help read along and also very entertaining. There are a variety of different activities a teacher could do with this book to help teach about letters. As a child, we acted out a little skit using this theme, and each student was a different letter. It is a great book and I would highly recommend it in the classroom.