This Lesson at a Glance:
Grade Band:
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Materials:
For the teacher:
For the student:
Targeted Standards:
The National Standards For Arts Education:
Music (K-4)
Standard 1: Singing, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music
Music (K-4)
Standard 2: Performing on instruments, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music
Theater (K-4)
Standard 1: Script writing by planning and recording improvisations based on personal experience and heritage, imagination, literature, and history
Theater (K-4)
Standard 2: Acting by assuming roles and interacting in improvisations
Theater (K-4)
Standard 3: Designing by visualizing and arranging environments for classroom dramatizations
Other National Standards:
Language Arts I (K-2)
Standard 5: Uses the general skills and strategies of the reading process
Language Arts I (K-2)
Standard 8: Uses listening and speaking strategies for different purposes
Mathematics I (K-2)
Standard 2: Understands and applies basic and advanced properties of the concepts of numbers
Science I (K-2)
Standard 6: Understands relationships among organisms and their physical environment
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Lesson Overview:
Early primary students will learn about meadow and swamp animal habitats. Students will use chronological ordering and phonics to reinforce beginning literacy skills. They will demonstrate understanding of these concepts through song, movement, and creative dramatization.
Length of Lesson:
Three 45-minute class periods
Notes:
This lesson is particularly suitable for grades Pre-K—2.
Instructional Objectives:
Students will:
- identify animals and their habitats.
- identify and use common organizational structures such as chronological order.
- use volume, facial expression and body movement to enhance communication.
- repeat aloud patterns and rhythms of text and identify rhyming words.
- use music to accompany text in a story.
Supplies:
- Over in the Meadow by Olive A. Wadsworth, Anna Vojtech. (Note: There are several versions of this book that can be used as well. See Sources section.)
- Large chart paper
- Laminating film
- Markers
Instructional Plan:
Teacher Background:
This lesson requires teacher knowledge in two areas:
- Prior to beginning this lesson, you should familiarize yourself with "phonological awareness" or phonemic awareness, which is the ability to deal explicitly and segmentally with sound units smaller than the syllable (Stanovich, 1993). To learn more about phonemic awareness and its use as a literacy tool, see the Sources section.
- You should become familiar with the music that accompanies the story prior to this lesson. Most versions of the book have the song in the back of the book. If you wish to hear the music, go to KIDiddles: Song Lyrics. You may also create your own tune or perform the story in a rap style.
Warm Up
Ask students if they have ever seen or walked in a meadow. Ask them to share what they saw. If the students have not experienced a meadow, use some of the illustrations from the book Over in the Meadow (see Sources section) to initiate the discussion. Do a picture walk through the book and identify the animals found in the meadow and where they live.
After completing the warm up, go back and read the story. Let students join in as they discover the pattern of the story. After each set of animals is introduced, ask students to predict how many animals will be in the next set. (Note: This gives them practice counting in chronological order.) After reading through the story one time, tell students that there are rhyming words in the story. Examples include "tree", "three", etc. Read the story a second time and have the students identify the rhyming words. Use the chant: "Tree, three,... they both say _ee_." (This builds phonemic awareness.)
Next, tell the students you are going to show them something very special about this story. Tell them there is music to accompany the story and that you can all sing the story. Sing the first page to them using the music from the book, Web site, or your own tune. Ask them to join in for the rest of the story. Students may want to sing it again. If so, divide the students into 10 groups. (One for each set of the animals in the story) The size of the class will determine how many animals are in each group. The number of students won't necessarily match the number of the animals in the book. In this way, everyone gets to participate.
Determine with the students the location of each habitat and if any furniture needs to be rearranged, or labels or pictures made to describe the environment. (Optional: Take time to make labels or pictures to go with the environment or save to do another day.) When you sing the verse about a particular animal, students should mimic the look and movements of that animal as they sing their part. One student could be designated as the mother animal or one student from each group could be the designated mother. (Note: This part of the lesson could also be left for the next class period, depending on the attention span of the class.)
For the next class, copy the Lyrics to "Down in the Swamp" by Diane Ambur on a large piece of chart paper. (If you are using the lesson for grades 1-2, you may wish to print out copies for students.) Leave blanks for the number words. Begin by asking students if they have seen or visited a swamp. Explain that a swamp is a warm, wet area with lots of forests. Ask students what they would see in a swamp. If students have no experience with swamps, then show them a drawing of swamp animals. For more information about swamps, use the Enchanted Learning.com: Swamp Life Animals Web page.
After the discussion of swamps and swamp animals, read the lyrics to "Down in the Swamp." Have the students fill in the missing number word. (Depending on skill level, you may wish to have students write the number or the number word.) As students are filling in the blanks, have the class also identify the rhyming words. When the first reading is finished, sing the story using the tune from the book Over in the Meadow. Put students in groups of animals to dramatize the story as they sing.
Assessment:
Use the Assessment Rubric to evaluate students' learning.
Extensions:
- Have students use the interactive, Meadow and Swamp Animals, to reinforce their understanding of which animals belong in each habitat. (Note: This interactive is literacy-based. Please preview and decide if appropriate for skill level and classroom.)
- Students can draw pictures of habitats for each animal to use in dramatization. Students can make masks of animals to use in dramatization.
- Students can use musical instruments to make the sounds of each animal.
- Students can do a comparison of two or more of the stories listed in the Sources section.
- Students can write their own story song as a group or individually and sing it to the tune of Over in the Meadow.
Ex.
Down at the zoo in the hot summer sun.
Lived an old mother lion and her little cub one.
"Roar," said the mother. "I roar," said the one.
And he roared and he roared in the hot summer sun.
Sources:
Print:
- Cabrera, Jane. Over in the Meadow. London: Gullane, 2000.
- Keats, Ezra Jack. Over in the Meadow. New York: Viking, 1999.
- Langstaff, John, and Rojankovsky, Feodor. Over in the Meadow. Hong Kong: South China Printing Co., 1985.
- Wadsworth, Olive and Vojtech, Anna. Over in the Meadow. New York: London: North South Books, 2002.
- Ward, Jennifer and Spengler, Kenneth J. Over in the Garden. Northland, Arizona, 2002.
- Ward, Jennifer and Spengler, Kenneth J. and Marsh, T.J. Somewhere in the Ocean. Northland, Arizona, 2000.
- Ward, Jennifer and Spengler, Kenneth J. and Marsh, T.J. Way Out in the Desert. Northland, Arizona, 2002.
- Wilson, Anna. Over in the Grasslands. Indiana: Little Brown and Company, 2004.
Web:
Authors:
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Diane Ambur, Retired Staff Development and Mentor Teacher
Montgomery County Public Schools, MD
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