What a great lesson! For my observed lesson, I combined a read-aloud with a math activity. First, I read the book,
Elmer, by David McKee. It's a cute story about an elephant who looks very different from the rest of his herd. Instead of regular elephant color (gray), he is patchwork colors. Elmer does not like that he looks different, so he runs away. When he comes across some gray-colored berries, he decides to cover its juices all over his body to make him look regular elephant color. When he returns to the herd, the rest of the elephants didn't recognize Elmer. When it rained, Elmer's identity was revealed, and the elephants were so happy to see him again and laughed because they all thought Elmer was playing the greatest joke of all time with them. They decided to name that day the "Elmer's Day Parade" and celebrated by painted their bodies with beautiful patterns and designs.
For the math activity, I decided to review the concept of patterns. The class had been introduced to patterns recently, so I knew they would be able to understand how to create a pattern. We looked at the last page of the book and described all the patterns that they could see. Then, on an elephant coloring page, the kids were instructed to create their own pattern, of their choice, using shapes and colors. Together, we talked about AB patterns, ABB patterns, AABB, patterns, and so on. It was pretty evident that they (or at least the majority) remembered how to make a pattern, so I handed out a blank elephant to each student and told them that we were going to have our own "Elmer's Day Parade," and they made such beautiful elephants!
Of course, there were a few that did not show to me that they knew how to make a pattern. With those kids, looking back on it now, it would have been a good idea to give them the option of working with blocks or some other types of manipulatives. Perhaps they just did not care to color? Perhaps the concept of patterns was not fully learned yet? I am not sure, but I think it would have been worthwhile to give another option to those students.
