The Lonely Scarecrow
Lesson one of two:
Show the front cover of the book and discuss the illustration
and the title with the students. Then, the students will be shown a prediction
picture card so that they understand that a prediction is a guess about what
will happen next. Each student will draw a prediction on a magic
magnetic board and share it verbally. They will share if their prediction was
correct or if the author surprised him/her.
Read the book, The Lonely Scarecrow, creatively written by Tim Preston
and elegantly illustrated by Maggie Keen. This book serves as a tool
for teachers and parents to discuss friendship and diversity of people.
The book's descriptions provide materials for teaching about seasons,
about adjectives and about sequencing and summarizing stories. The students
will learn how to foster friendships by discussing the feelings that the
scarecrow, e.g., the animals did not interact with him and he was lonely and
then the animals played with him and he was happy.
The students will complete the story stem, "I am a good friend by...."
This is a time to talk about how to interact with peers by greeting them,
asking questions, answering questions, listening, taking turns talking,
playing with toys, etc. These are called social, pragmatic language skills.
Lesson two of two:
The students will have a show and tell time for the scarecrow puppet that they
created at home. After each student shares, the other students in the group
will ask him/her questions about the scarecrow. Children will be encouraged
to answer with part of the question in their answer. This is called Complete
Sentence Including the Question (CSIQ) which teaches answering questions
with an on topic response.
Discuss with the children that they will be writing a letter to the scarecrow for
home work. Then, read The Lonely Scarecrow to the students. Review the
web with key words about what they could say to the scarecrow.
