Lesson Plan 3
Lesson Topic/Subject: The Mitten Lesson: Where Do Bears Live?
Grade Level: Kindergarten
Approximate Time: 45 minutes

Objectives:

  1. Given the story The Mitten by Jan Brett read aloud, students will practice making predictions about what will happen in the story by looking at the pictures and answering questions aloud.
  2. Given a blank sheet of paper and writing utensils, students will demonstrate knowledge of dens by drawing a picture of a bear in a den and describing that picture to the teacher.

Materials:

For the teacher:
For the students:

Procedures:

Anticipatory Set:
  1. Show the students a child's mitten.
  2. Ask the students if a bear could fit into a mitten.
Sequence of learning activities:
  1. Begin reading the story, The Mitten by Jan Brett, aloud. (This is a Ukrainian folk tale about a little boy who loses his mitten in the snow. Animals, including a bear, crawl into the lost mitten to get warm.)
  2. Point out the mitten-shaped illustrations on the borders of the big illustrations of the book. (These are pictures that foreshadow what will happen on the next page of the story. They show pictures of animals in their homes before they find the mitten. One of the animals is a bear in a den.)
  3. Ask the students to predict what will happen in the story by looking at the mitten-shaped pictures on the borders of the book.
  4. Read the entire story, stopping to ask questions or to have the class predict what will happen.
  5. Ask the students to recall where the bear lived before he found the mitten. Introduce the word "den" and the concept of hibernation.
  6. Show the students pictures of various dens, including a den in a hollow tree, a snow den, and a cave. One book that has good pictures of dens is Please Don't Feed the Bears! by Allan Fowler.
  7. Show the students a picture of a bear in a den that you have drawn. Tell them about your picture. Then write a description under the picture. For example, you might write that "My black bear lives in a den in a hollow tree."
  8. Show the students a blank piece of white paper. Tell them that they have to draw a bear in a den. They can choose the type of bear and the type of den. Then, tell them that you will come around and ask them to tell you about their picture. You will record their description on the bottom of their picture (Language Experience Approach).
  9. Ask the students to repeat the directions to you.
  10. Dismiss the students one table at a time. Pass out a sheet of white paper as they leave the meeting area. Appoint one student from each table to pick up pencils, markers, and crayons.
  11. Circulate around the room to answer questions. As students begin to finish their drawings, sit down and let the students dictate a description of their picture to you. (This will take some time. You will probably have to finish at another time.)
Closure:
  1. When the students are finished, call each of them back to the meeting area.
  2. Call on several students to show and describe their pictures. Read the words once, and then point to the words and ask the students to help you read.

Evaluation of Student Learning:

  1. Did the students make predictions about the story after looking at the pictures?
  2. Did the students draw a picture of a bear in a den (hollow tree, a snow den, or a cave)?
  3. How did the students describe their pictures? Did they use the name of the bear and the type of den that their bear lived in?