Integrating Language Arts: If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

Overview

Featured Resources

From Theory to Practice

 

OVERVIEW

This lesson uses Laura Joffe Numeroff's If You Give a Mouse a Cookie to combine word-skill work with prediction and sequencing practice. Students learn about cause-effect relationships during a shared reading of the book and then complete a cloze exercise that uses context and initial consonant clues. Students then create story circles that display the events of the story and use these circles to retell the story to a peer. Finally the students compose their own stories, featuring themselves in the role of the mouse.

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FEATURED RESOURCES

Story Circle handout: Students will use this handout to recall the events of the story and organize the matching picture cards into the story sequence.

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FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

Taylor, B.M., Peterson, D.S., Pearson, P.D., & Rodriguez, M.C. (2002). Looking inside classrooms: Reflecting on the "how" as well as the "what" in effective reading instruction. The Reading Teacher, 56(3), 270–279.

• A teacher-directed approach is less effective in teaching students to read and improving their reading skills.
  
  
• Students demonstrate more growth in reading fluency when they are given chances to actively participate in reading activities, as opposed to passively responding.
  
  
• Small-group instruction and word-skill work are beneficial for reading growth in kindergarten.

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