Picture Book Lesson

The picture book that I selected was a favorite book from my childhood. I chose the book Tikki Tikki Tembo a Folktale retold by Arlene Mosel and illustrated by Blair Lent. This is a story that my mother read to me as a child. I remember she has signed me up for a reading program in which books would come in the mail each month. I remember that I couldn't wait to go to the mailbox and get my new books each month. This book was one of the many books that helped me develop a love of reading that I would like to instill in my students.

I used stragtagies from the article:  Picture book Power: Connecting Children's Literature and Mathematics by Joyce Shatzer, The Reading Teacher, 61(8),pp.649-653 DOI:1598/RT.6.8.6.

Standards Covered:

Phonological Awareness
ELA1R2 The student demonstrates the ability to identify and orally manipulate words and indivdual sounds with in those spoken words.

Phonics
ELA1R3 The student demonstrates the relationships between letters and letter combinations of written words and the sounds of spoken words.

Math
M1N4 Student will count collections of up to 100 objects by dividing them into equal parts and representing the results using words, pictures, or diagrams.
M1M1 Students will compare the length, heightl, weight, or capacity of two or more objects by using direct comparison or a nonstandard unit.

Objectives of the lesson:
To increase student's engagement with a read aloud text.
To introduce new vocabulary to students.
To introduce students to Folktales as a literary genre.
To delvelop students skills wen comparing and counting letters in a name.
To recognize that words are made up of letters and that letters makes sounds.
The student will begin to recognize letter patterns in names.

Kid friendly vocabulary words introduced:

Folktale--an old story that has been passed down in a family and told over the years.
Name--what someone calls you, usually given to you by your parents.
Short--small length
Long--large in length
Well-- a place where water is is collected usually covered.

Procedure:
The story was introduced to the students as a one of my favorite stories as a child. I told the students that it was a story that my mother had read to me and that I had loved it and hoped that they would find it just as interesting. I began with asking the students if they knew what a folktale was. Many of the students raised their hands and wanted to make predictions about what it could be. I allowed them time to do this and then I gave them a kid friendly defintion of the word. I then began the first reading of the story. During the story I had to provide a defintion of the word well for the students because many of them had now idea what it was and they wanted to know.  The students were very captivated by the story. They were amused by the length of Tikki Tikki Tembo's name. 
After reading the story we discussed the story with a focus on the length of  Tikki Tikki Tembo's name and compared it to the length of his brother Chang's name. Both names were written on the white board for the students to count the letters and compare the length to determine which name was long and which one was short. At this time the vocabulary words long and short were discussed.
After this activity we had a second reading of the story and the students were just as captivated by the story as they had been during the first reading. They enjoyed hearing me read Tikki Tikki Tembo's name and many of them tried to join in as I read his name in the story. After this reading we worked on breaking Tikki Tikki Tembo's name into parts and clapping out the beats to his name. Then we formed a circle and took turns clapping out the beats in each students name to determine who in our class had the longest name with the most beats. This activity was very engaging to the students and all students participated in the activity.

Reflections:  This activity was exciting for the students. They enjoyed the story as much as I had as a child they were engaged during the intire lesson with very little off task behavior noted. The students has fun comparing their names and clapping out the beats. They learned some new vocabulary words and hopefully they will seek out other folktales to read in the future. I could have expanded the lesson by providing the students with other titles of folktales to explore in the future.  This lesson could also be linked with a previous lesson we has taught using the book Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes. I really liked that I could incorporate math and reading together in a lesson.