BOOK COMPANION LESSON PLAN: BROWN BEAR, BROWN BEAR, WHAT DO YOU SEE?
Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See? is a fantastic children’s book written by Bill Martin, Jr. and illustrated by Eric Carle. It has beautiful illustrations and the repetitive text makes it fun for kids to be able to read along. A few years ago, I use this text to create a fun and engaging lesson for my students. After reading the book, we made our own version of the book titled "PreK, PreK, What Do You See?” This activity was not only simple and easy to do, but it was a great way to help students practice name writing and to learn their classmates names. Here is how you can implement this fun activity with your classroom.
WHAT YOU NEED
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Read aloud
Pencils
Skin color crayons (optional)
Mirrors (optional)
Before beginning this lesson, you will need to choose which template from this resource you will want to use with your class. This resource comes with templates with and without self portraits, templates with and without name tracing practice, and templates with and without student photos. For this example, I used the template which includes a self portrait and photo option. Once you have selected the template you will use, you can create a copy for each student.
I created a sample page for each of my students. Using photos received at the beginning of the school year, I created a copy of the page with a photo in the bottom corner for each of my students. To begin this lesson you will read the story Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? as a class. Then students will recreate their own version of the story by completing their page of the story book. Students will begin by writing their name on the designated line of the template and then work on drawing their own self portrait.
I would recommend using mirrors if you have them available to allow students to be able to see their face before drawing their own self portrait. I would also recommend modeling this lesson for students. I modeled my page in the story for students so that they can see how they would create their own page. If time permits, you can have students color in their self portrait. Once all pages have been completed, you can put them together into a classroom book and add to your classroom library. This activity was very helpful for students to not have practice writing and recognizing their name, but it helped them to begin to recognize their classmates name. I also included my page and my Assistant Teacher’s page in the book so that students could learn our names as well.
This activity is great to introduce at the beginning of the school year like I did with my class or you can incorporate this into your winter and/or hibernation unit. This resource comes with samples grades PreK - Second Grade but is customizable so you can create your own to match your grade level or classroom name. I hope you find this activity as fun as my class did. You can pick up the template to use for your class using the link below.
