Grade: Elementary

#2103. Guided Reading: Rosie's Walk

Reading/Writing, level: Elementary
Posted Sun Jan 14 06:45:32 PST 2001 by Debbie Harrison (ddharris@erols.com).
KinderLit Books
London Towne ES, Centreville, VA
Materials Required: Optional: hay, honey, flour in a bag, rake
Concepts Taught: position words, farm life

Guided Reading Lessons
Rosie's Walk by Pat Hutchins
--Debbie Harrison

Note: Kinderlit has a great blackline book that allows students to have their own copy of the story which they illustrate with collage techniques. Kinderlit is a great online resource for many blackline titles, and they go along with the seasonal themes, concepts and classic titles so many of us use in kindergarten. They can be reached at www.kinderlit.com

Day 1: You might wish to bring in a sample of hay and flour in a bag, honey to taste and a rake in order to build background. Tell the children that there are very few words because the author wanted the pictures to tell the story and make you smile. Picture Walk: What do you see on the cover? Does the little house have a name? (chicken coop) Does Rosie know she is being followed? Make predictions. Look at the title page to see a bigger picture of where Rosie lives. What do you see on her farm? (notice the mill, the haystack, the beehives, the wagon.) Continue to picture walk, and notice the string on the mill page--stop and make a prediction. STOP when you get to the beehive page. Name all the animals who notice the fox.

Day 2: Before reading, have the children invent a sound effect for each disaster that happens to the fox, then incorporate these sounds into the story as it is read. After reading aloud, use these discussion questions:
How did Rosie get out of her henhouse? Why is the fox crouching? Why didn't the fox see the rake when he pounced on Rosie? Did Rosie know she was being followed? Did the frogs know? the goat? the beaver? Did Rosie know the string was around her foot when she walked past the mill? Check the answers by looking back at the pictures in the book. What was the funniest thing that happened to the fox? Did Rosie ever know she was in danger? Do you think the fox will come back?

Day 3: Talk about setting--when, where. Have the children make their own storyboards of all the places to use for retelling, adding 2 puppets. OR divide them into teams to draw the different places (7 teams of children) and lay them out as the Story Map of the Setting. Use beanie babies or stick puppets as a hen and fox who walk on the story map. OR make a mural with cut out objects to complete the farm scene.

Day 4: During the read aloud today, make an audio tape with the children reading the story and making sound effects to put in the listening center with copies of the book. After reading, split the children into teams and give them sentence strips with the 8 phrases from the book written on them to match to the text.

Day 5: Act out the story: Use pictures or things in the room to be the rake on the ground, the pond to walk around, the haystack to climb over, the mill she walked next to, the fence she walked through and the beehives she walked under, and the henhouse.

Other ideas: Innovate the text by choosing two new animals to be predator and prey, like a bird and a worm or octopus and fish. Discuss the setting and use directionality phrases like over a rock, through a cave, around a bush, etc. Each child can illustrate a page. The last page could read "and got back in time for dinner."

Another Innovation: Write an innovation called The Kindergarten Walk. It'll be set in the playground (Kindergarten went for a walk...under the monkey bars, across the bridge, through the tunnels, etc....and got back in time for lunch!) and take digital pictures to illustrate the book