Introduction
Dr. Seuss week at LIFE was incredibly fun. Students and staff dressed up in a fun way each day, from green outfits in honor of Green Eggs and Ham to Wacky Tacky Day in honor of Dr. Seuss’s Birthday on March 2nd.
The Seuss story, There´s a Wocket in my Pocket provides the perfect opportunityto practice rhyming words and to create made-up words and characters.
Words that rhyme
During the introductory part of their lesson, students brainstormed different funny rhyming words. Miss Saunders uses the consonant blends that students have learned and asks them to create rhyming words with ‘desk’. This bright class comes up with blesk, clesk, cresk, thesk, shesk and many more!
Miss Saunders goes on to show them how to make up a character just like Dr. Seuss´ Wocket character in the story. Miss Saunders’ has a Scotter Chottle hiding in her water bottle.
Creating their own character
The students then use a planning paper called “My Silly Dr. Seuss Character” to help students visualize their character. They decide if their character is big, small, or medium, if he or she is young or old, the color of his/her body, how many teeth, fingers, eyes and other body parts.
Brainstorming
Once the students complete their brainstorming sheet, they continue the writing process where they write about their character.
They think and develop their writing skills in English with both teachers, Ms. Voyles and Miss Saunders. It´s moments like this where the awesome ratio in the classroom is a luxury for students. They are guided very well throughout their writing assignment.
Lastly, they are asked to create their character with colored construction paper.
With such a motivational activity, the 1st and 2nd graders are beautifully engaged in rhyming words as well as exercising their imagination and learning the writing process. One goal of the whole language class was to break down the fears of writing and help students discover the joy in creating. That goal was met. It was super fun meeting characters like “Gosór at the Door” and “Thook in his Book.”
Today was a full day for the students. They were able to have fun dressing up, read Dr. Seuss books, create silly creatures and share them with their classmates and teachers.