http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Thebes/9893/thedrsuesspage.html - For other Seuss IdeasThe Cat in The Hat - A Mini Unit
Here are some ideas that may help you enhance your unit in the Cat in The Hat by Dr. Seuss. Also studying Seuss is a great idea for March because it is reading month!
Getting Ready - some ideas to help you get ready for your mini unit...
1.) Discuss rainy day activities and create a rainy day bulletin board by having the children list their favorite thing to do on a rainy day. Have them place their ideas on a cut-out of a raindrop. Place the raindrops on the board around a picture of a house and a cat in a hat. Title the board "Fun in the Rain".
2.) Get the book Cat in The Hat from your school library. Also you may wish to make a recording of The Cat in the Hat. Place the recording in your listening center.
3.) Collect various pictures of hats and place them around the room. Discuss each hat and when or where you might wear the hat.
4.) Get ready to read the book by discussing some questions;
Have you ever been left at home alone? Why or why not?
Discuss times when it took lots of courage for you to tell something to your parents.
What would you do if a stranger came to your home and you were all alone?
Discuss strangers.
5.) Get ready to rhyme by making a pattern of a hat and one of a cat. Make many copies of each. On the cat cut-outs you may wish to write the words - play, cat, man, gown, two, sunny, said, fear, ball, say, pot, you, hall, hook, cake, mat, go, fox, now, bump, yes, so, fish , sit, you, and hot. On the hat cut-outs you may wish to write - day, do, all, bit, jump, hat, rake, how, dish, away, funny, that, fan, head, not, know, box, look, down, hear, to , mess, no, wall. Now you need to laminate all of the cards and place them in an envelope. You now have a rhyming center! The children place the hat on the correct cat!
6.) Get ready to read by having the children learn sight words found in the story. Give each student some construction paper. Have them make it a book by folding it in half and decorating the front with the title Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss. Have the students decorate the front of their books. Place the below words on the board and have the students write them on lined paper and place them in their book. - shine, play, take, mother, cut, two, there, day, cold, something, want, head, wall, should, thing, nothing, saw, our, house, said, white, red, cat , why, when, could, should, alone, have, these, was, good, what, like, know, little, looked, your, this, you. Practice these words often.
These lessons are broken down - but can be done in any order or you could just use the ideas separately...
Lesson 1
!.) Go over the sight words on the board. Read the story orally to the students. 2.) Discuss the story with the students and have them draw a picture of the characters in the story. 3.) Encourage them to place the characters in a setting. 4.) Read through the story again. This time pause to ask questions. 5.) In The Cat in the Hat, the children were told not to have a guest when their mother was not home. Discuss rules that the students have at their houses. 6.) Have them write a list of rules they must follow at home.
Lesson 2
1.) Have the children reread the story first chorale with you and then have them each take turns reading the story to you. 2.) Have the students sequence the story. You could place the following sentence on a piece of paper in random order. Have each student cut-out each strip and then place them on a piece of paper in the correct order. Or you may wish to have a center set up at a pocket chart. Write each sentence on a sentence strip and have the students sequence them in the correct order. - It is raining, so Sally and her brother have nothing to do. The Cat in the Hat comes to the house. The cat wants to do tricks, but the fish tells him to go away. The cat does not listen to the fish and starts to do tricks and messes up the house. Mother is on her way home. The cat cleans the house and leaves. Mother comes home. Mother asks the kids about their day. The children do not know if they should tell their mother about their day. 3.) Have the students do this dot-to-dot... http://www.randomhouse.com/seussville/games/dots/catdot.html 4.) Have the class play rhyme detective with partners. To prepare for this, make a sheet by having a page number from the book and then a word that rhymes with the word in the book. The children must find the word on the given page that rhymes with your word.
Lesson 3
1.) Reread the story orally in groups. Work on fluency. You may want to rewrite the story as a script and assign parts to each child in the group. 2.) In groups create books using the following sentences; It is raining, so Sally and her brother have nothing to do. The Cat in the Hat comes to the house. The cat wants to do tricks, but the fish tells him to go away. The cat does not listen to the fish and starts to do tricks and messes up the house. Mother is on her way home. The cat cleans the house and leaves. Mother comes home. Mother asks the kids about their day. The children do not know if they should tell their mother about their day. Have the students write each sentence on a separate page and then draw a picture about each sentence in their books.
Lesson 4
1.) Do the help the cat find his hat maze http://www.randomhouse.com/seussville/games/maze/ 2.) Complete the following phonographs lesson at http://www.lessonplanspage.com/ReadingCatInHat.htm - Student will learn various phonograms and identify these phonograms through several words in context. Also, student will learn to read four more difficult words (mother, trick, thing, fish).
Lesson 5
1.) Have the students read their books (lesson 3) orally to the class. 2.) Have the students rewrite a different ending to the story. 3.) Make a sheet with a statement a character in the story might say. Have the students place the characters name next to the statement. 4.) You may wish to try this craft with your class... http://www.makingfriends.com/ponybead/ponycathat.htm
Lesson 6
1.) Record each student reading the Cat in The Hat. If you made scripts, record the play. 2.) Write a poem in a house frame or a hat frame. Line 1 should have one word and state a characters name from the story. Line 2 should have 2 words and describe the character. Line 3 should have 3 words and tell the setting of the story. Line 4 should have 4 words and state the problem. Line 5 should have five words and state the solution. Line 6 is a free line and the students may write what they wish.
Other Sites of Interest
Lesson ideas for... Hooray for Diffendoofer Day!, Green Eggs and Ham, My Many Colored Days!, Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in The Hat, Hop on Pop, Fox In Sox, The Sneetches, and The Lorax http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Thebes/9893/bookideasdrs.html
Seuss activity sheets http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Thebes/9893/drsuessactivity.html
Play Cat in The Hat Concentration Online http://www.randomhouse.com/seussville/games/concentration/
Play other Online Games http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Thebes/9893/interactsuess.html
Read about the Author http://www.nea.org/readacross/seussbiography.html
More Great Ideas For A Seuss Unit http://www.angelfire.com/ma/1stGrade/Seuss.html
Five Days Worth of Lessons http://teachers.net/lessons/posts/470.html
Colleen Gallagher
k-3 Special Education Teacher
Silver Ridge Elementary - Silverdale, Washington
New Jobs on Teachers.Net
