Bretten Allen

Lesson Title: George Shrinks Dramatic Read Aloud

Grade Level: 1st Grade
State Standards:
Reading: Literature Standard 2: Retell stories, including key details, and demonstrate
understanding of their central message or lesson.

Reading: Literature Standard 7: Use illustrations and details in a story to describe its
characters, setting, or events.

Standard 1.D.CR.4: Respond to suggestion and change movement through guided

improvisational experiences or short remembered sequences

Specific Lesson Objective:

Students will conceptualize, generate, develop, and organize artistic ideas and work.
Students will be able to use creative arts to retell a story.

Lesson Purpose:
Guide students to use a more creative pathway to think about the literature that they are
reading/experiencing.
Showing students that the text may not mean what it appears to mean, looking at the pictures
in a book may give a different idea to what is happening.

Essential Questions:
How can creative arts help with literary comprehension?

Vocabulary Focus:
 Shrink
 Creativity
 Misleading
 Retell

Materials:
 “George Shrinks” by William Joyce
 Doc cam
 Smart board
 Paper
 Pencils
 Bretten Allen

Anticipated Time Frame:

30 minutes

Adaptations for SPED and ELL:

Enlarge text, put pictures on smartboard, group students who need more assistance with peers
who grasp the assignment, give more time, model each step…

DAP:
Developmentally appropriate, going along with the grade standards, every student can
participate, hands on and minds on…

Phase I: Exploration and Explanation

Ask students to come to the carpet at the front of the room in front of the read aloud chair.
Quickly review the need for good behavior in order to do be able to do fun and creative lessons.
Introduce vocabulary words. Ask students to raise their hands if they already know what a
specific word means. Introduce the book. Ask students what they think the book will be about,
incorporating their funds of knowledge from previous lessons on what good readers do. Start
reading.

During the reading: Read the book once without showing the pictures to the students. Ask students to
retell what the book was about. Then, reread the book showing the pictures to the class. Stop on each
page and discuss how they view that part of the story differently now that they can see the pictures. For
example, when his parents ask him to get some fresh air we might guess that he goes outside and walks
around. When we see the picture, we can see that he is inside a tiny toy airplane and is flying around the
outside of his house.

After reading: Have a quick discussion on how different the book was now that they could see
the whole thing. Ask a few students to now retell the book. Tell the class that it is now time to
use our creativity to retell the book using body movements. Just like the pictures in the book,
doing movements along with word can give people a better idea of what is actually going on.
Model the first few pages, depending on student need, and act out the pictures from the book.
Have students join in and create more actions for the following pages.

Transition to Phase II:

1. Review new concepts
2. Give directions for Phase II
3. Discuss how behavior has been so far
 Bretten Allen

Phase II: Guided Practice/Differentiation:

Students will take the lead with creating the movements to tell the story. Listen and observe
students to gauge understanding. Review instructions if there is confusion. Facilitate, only
asking guiding questions and writing the steps on the board if needed. Have students
perform/retell the entirety of the book when all movements are selected. This will informally
assess their comprehension.

Transition to Phase III:

1. Review new concepts
2. Give directions for Phase III
3. Discuss how behavior has been so far

Phase III: Independent Practice/Assessment

The next day, students will write down everything they remember about the book that was
read. This will assess their comprehension and whether or not the movements aided in that.
Read another book and have students lead the entire creation. This will determine if they
understood the lesson from the previous day. Ask students questions about vocabulary and
discuss how they liked creating the movements.