Meghan Kelly

11/15/17
READ ALOUD LESSON PLAN
Teachers Name: Ms. Holly Blais
Title (or focus) of the Lesson: My Dog Is Lost!
Grade Level(s): Pre-K
Objective(s)
Virginia Literacy Foundation Block 1
Oral Language: The child will develop listening and speaking skills by
communicating experiences and ideas orally.
c) Make predictions about what might happen in a story.
d) Use complete sentences to ask and answer questions about experiences
or about what has been read.
Materials
My Dog Is Lost! By Ezra Jack Keats
Procedures
I. Opener
Prior to nap time, or in a small group during choice time, I will have
students sit around me either at a table or on the carpet.
I will tell them I am going to read them a story about a boy who lost his
dog, and needed help finding it. I will ask the students if they have ever
lost anything, and how they found it. Did anyone help them?
I will share with them that the boy is really sad because he lost his dog,
but also is worried because he only speaks Spanish and doesnt know how
he will get help to find the dog. I will ask the students how they think they
would feel if they needed help, but didnt know the words to ask.
II. Body
I will begin reading the book. Once we reach the point where the boy
doesnt know what to do about finding his dog (because of the language
barrier), I will ask the students if they have any ideas of what he could do.
 I will tell them we can make predictions about what we think will happen,
and ask them to do so. This will take place in a conversational manner.
I will then continue reading the book. At times when we encounter a
Spanish word, I will stop and ask the students if they know what the word
means, and together we can use context clues and the images to try to
figure it out.
III. Closing
I will ask the students what they thought about how the boy solved the
problem. Do they have any other ideas of things the boy could have done?
We will talk about the new words they learned. Do they know any other
Spanish words? Do they know any words in any other languages?
I will ask the students if they have any friends or know anyone who may
not speak English, or might speak another language as well. How can we
communicate with these friends? How can we make
them feel welcome and help them when they need help?
 Reflection

The book I chose to read with the students is Ezra Jack Keats My Dog is Lost. The

topic of my diversity text set is immigration and refugees, so this book about a young boy

who is new to America fit in perfectly. This book was extremely diverse as it explored the

idea of needing help in a country where you do not understand the language and many

people do not understand you. This is something people experience all over the world

daily, and not just in the United States. Its important to understand how others feel when

they are unable to communicate, and keep this concept in mind when interact with

individuals who come from different places or live a different type of life from yourself.

This book also taught children how to help those who are unable to communicate, and

that a common language does not need to exist to create relationships. This was very

fitting as one child in the class does not speak English like the other kids, yet she is still

able to communicate and form friendships with the other students despite not having a

common language. According to Morrow, in her Literacy Development in the Early

Years, it is very important to maintain a diverse classroom to support students from

different cultures. A rule for multicultural classrooms is that children who do not speak

English or standard English must learn English, but they should also retain and value

their first language and culture (Morrow, 2014, p. 69). Including books such as this one,

that have both English and Spanish words, is a great way to help bilingual students retain

their first language in an environment when they are primarily taught English. Not only

does it help the individual student, it allows other students to learn about other cultures

and languages, and the classroom as a whole to feel connected.

 During choice time, I gathered a few students on the carpet to read them my book.

The group was diverse with five students, four girls and one boy. Of the four girls, three

of them spoke Spanish. Two were bilingual, and one does not speak any English. The

other girl and the boy both only spoke English. Before reading the book, I told the

students that in the book there was a boy who lost his dog, and asked them if they had

ever lost anything. All the students nodded, and I asked them what the object was and

how they found it. One boy shared that he lost his iPad, and his dad found it in his car.

This prompted another girl to talk about how her mom always looses her keys, and they

always have to search the house before going anywhere to try to find them. I then told the

students that this boy only speaks Spanish, and didnt know how he would find the dog. I

asked them how they would feel if this was them, and what they would do to get help.

One student simply said I would ask for help! and the others nodded. It was clear they

did not really understand the concept of not knowing what others are saying. I then began

to read the book. When we got to the point where the boy didnt know how to find his

dog, I again asked them what they thought he should do. Again, a child answered that he

should ask for help. I kept reading, and we began to encounter Spanish words. Each time

I read a Spanish word, we would use the context clues to figure out what it meant. It

surprised me that often times the bilingual students would not offer the meaning of the

words, and instead it was the English speaking students who were figuring out and

sharing the meaning. The girl who only spoke Spanish did smile when we repeated the

new words we learned as a whole. As I continued to read the book, the children were

getting antsy and I could tell that the book was a little long for them. I began to

paraphrase some pages, and talk about the pictures more than the words. We reached the
end of the book where all the Spanish words mentioned are used again, so we ended the

read-aloud by discussing these words. While the students were not able to understand

losing something and not knowing the language to find it again, they did learn a lot of

new Spanish words and remembered their meaning without context clues at the end of the

story. We did not get to the other questions because at this point their attention spans were

nonexistent.

The students reacted very positively to reading this book. They really enjoyed

learning the new Spanish words and figuring out what they meant based on the pictures.

The images were very helpful when finding the meaning of the words, to the point where

I did not even need to help the students figure out what they meant. I would simply ask

what they thought a word meant and they would respond, which was great for their self-

confidence but also small group learning. The concept of a boy losing something was

very age-appropriate for the children as well. While they did not fully grasp that the boy

did not speak any English and that was contributing to his fear, they did understand that

he was upset because he had lost his dog. They were also able to verbalize things they

had lost previously, and how they had found them with help, proving they understood the

concept of asking for help and helping others.

There are some changes that I would make the next time I did this activity or one

like it. First, the book I chose was too long for the attention spans of the children. The

book was read to them in a small group while the rest of the class was playing, so they

were distracted by their peers and werent fully engaged in the book. In the future I would

do a lesson like this one in a whole class setting, with no distractions, after a busy time of

day so the children would be calm and engaged, such as before nap time. Second, I would
have enjoyed doing more with this book. One idea I had was for the students to use the

words they learned to decorate their own dog- decorating it according to how the book

described him in the Spanish words. Another idea is to create their own classroom poster

to help find the dog, by including images and the words that describe what he looks like.

Doing an active activity such as these to close the lesson would have been helpful for the

children to understand how the young boy felt.

When planning this lesson, I made it way more complex than it needed to be for

the age group I was presenting it to. I came up with way too many questions and complex

thoughts to discuss with them, when really I should have come up with a way to begin

and maneuver a discussion that was mainly led by the kids. The format was too

question-answer for the age group, and I believe that contributed to their lack of

interest. I also should have let the children ask questions instead of me asking all of them.

This would have kept them more engaged as well, and made the experience more

enjoyable for them. Overall, I did enjoy the lesson and felt like the students gained new

knowledge out of it.

References

Morrow, L. M. (2014). Literacy Development In the Early Years: Helping Children Read

and Write. United States of America: Pearson.