Lesson Plan – Animalia Pages
Brendan Kelly Context:
A first grade lesson on letter sounds and beginning of word sounds.
Time Required: 45-50 minutes. Objectives:
During this lesson, students will be able to demonstrate their understanding of the beginning word sounds of animals and objects in the Animalia book by identifying pictures that start with the corresponding letter.

Students will be able to demonstrate their understanding of the beginning sound of their name by creating pictures that start with the same letter as their name. Benchmarks: AR.03.CP.01 Use experiences, imagination, essential elements and organizational principles to achieve a desired effect when creating, presenting and/or performing works of art. AR.03.CP.04 Describe how one's own work reveals knowledge of the arts, orally and in writing. EL.01.RE.27 Classify categories of words (e.g., concrete collections of animals, foods, toys). EL.01.RE.26 Develop vocabulary by listening to and discussing both familiar and conceptually challenging selections read aloud. Preparation:
Enough Animalia books for each table group or one book per 5-6 students. Markers, crayons, or other coloring utensils. Blank sheets of white computer paper or colored paper. Lesson Introduction: (5-8 min)
Today I am going to ready a special book to you. This book has a pattern, let’s see if we can find out what the pattern is. What do you notice about the cover? Can we make any predictions about the book so far? Let’s read the first page and see if we can come up with any other predictions. Do we notice anything about the words in the first page? Is there a pattern forming? Raise your hand with pictures you see on the page. Can we make any predictions about the next page? Sharing Objectives:
The purpose to this lesson is to recognize the beginning sounds of our names and make connections to other animals or objects that also start with the same sound. Learning Activities: a) Read Aloud at Circle Group – (10-15 minutes)
What have we found out about this book? Can we make any guesses or predictions on what to expect throughout the book? Raise your hand if you see an animal or object that starts with the letter on the page. After I read the page as a group let’s say the letter and letter sound that each page corresponds to.
 b) Creating Our Personal Page – (15-20 minutes).
We have all seen how each page has animals and words that begin with a certain letter. I want each of you to make your own page from the book using the first letter of your name. This way you can start by drawing a picture of yourself and then add other animals and objects that have the same beginning sound and letter as your name. When you get back to your table write your first name in the corner of your page and then begin with your page.
 c) Differentiations - 
Content – For those who have trouble thinking of other animals or objects, plenty copies of Animalia will be available and the teacher is meant to roam around giving extra help to students that are struggling.
Process – Students who get finished early or want more of a challenge will be encouraged to add words to their picture.
Environment – Students will be allowed to move around and talk with other students. Students who have the same first letter in their name will be encouraged to help each other with ideas. The teacher will be available for assistance as they move around the classroom.
 Closure: (5-10 minutes)
After the students have finished their pictures or the time is running out the students will be brought back together to share their own pictures with either their table groups or the front of the classroom. Follow-up Lessons:
A follow up lesson for this could be making an alphabet book with representation of every letter and pictures to represent those letters. Each student could do a letter that was different from their first names. Student Assessment:
As the teacher is walking around the class they are constantly assessing the students through personal individual conferences and observations. Attempts to find words that start with the same letter as their name and then attempting to draw pictures of those objects or animals will aid in the assessment. Assessment can also be done through descriptions of their pictures during sharing time. Teacher Reflection:
 After doing this lesson there were a few things that I wish I did differently. I had a plan to explain the book in the beginning a bit more and call on students who only raised their hands but as I was reading students were shouting out items they saw in the pictures. This is not something that really distracts me as a teacher, but I realize that a lot of the time it is the same students who are yelling out the objects and that leave some of the students out of the mix. If I were to do this again I would concentrate more on management of the students in the read aloud space and make sure everyone gets a chance to spot an image in the story.
 Another aspect that I noticed after watching the video of myself was that I wasn’t very conscious of how I was holding the book. I constantly brought the book close to my chest to read and didn’t hold the book out to show everyone the pictures. I didn’t notice this when I was reading the story but in the video there was a girl that was on one of the sides that kept standing up to get a better look at the pictures as I panned the book around.
When talking to my mentor teacher about the lesson we came to the conclusion to use the student’s first name as the spring board for their creativity. Allowing them to first draw a picture of themselves and then alleviating the blank page syndrome. I think this worked fairly well for the students, the ones who had difficulty were more burnt out from the day since and this activity came right after lunch.
 As far as the student burn out this lesson was done in the three days before thanksgiving. During these three days the students are constantly doing more artsy activities and I think the placement of the lesson could have gotten more student involvement during a normal week where they are not bombarded by art lessons.
If I do this lesson again the biggest area I will change is during my transition from read aloud to the individual project. Next time I do this lesson I will have a demonstration at the overhead of how the page can be set up. I will not leave the demonstration on the overhead but I would do a quick demonstration using my last name Kelly so the students have another image to draw from and get started off of.
 Overall I was happy with the lesson. It gave me a lot of feedback that I would normally not notice and also gave me plenty of experience. My mentor teacher thought the lesson went very smooth and was excited about the student involvement and surprised with some of the pages the students made. We watched the video together and brainstormed the improvement in the areas above. Inspiration/Resources:
 The inspiration to do this lesson came from my Expressive Arts teacher Mark Bailey and his lesson plan on the book Animalia. Inspiration also came from my own elementary experience using the book at McLane Elementary School.
Project TEAM
Project TEAM:
Technology
Expressive
Arts,
Methods This assignment was focused on designing a lesson plan that incorporated elements of personal expression along Oregon State curriculum benchmarks. Design in implementing, carrying out, and documenting through multimedia.