This Spot the Dog teacher lesson plan for Easter is targeted to preschool through grade one, and can be completed in about 30 to 60 minutes. Minimal supplies or prep work are required, making this lesson easy and fun for busy teachers of elementary students. Teachers need a copy of the book Spot’s First Easter by Eric Hill, [Puffin, 2004].
Spot the Dog Lesson Overview and Objectives
This literacy lesson encourages prereading and prewriting skills and furnishes a foundation for emergent readers. Visual teaching aids such as sequencing pictures are used to support and extend the learning environment for all types of learning styles.
Using hands-on tactile activities and planned repetition, teachers accomplish the following objectives:
- Children connect pictures and spoken words.
- Patterning and sequencing skills are introduced and supported.
- Prewriting skills are encouraged and the concept of forming sentences is introduced.
This lesson plans focuses on one main concept – understanding the sequence of events – and is taught in various ways to reinforce the lesson and help the children internalize the concept. Using pictures and the spoken word in conjunction with a fun story makes learning fun and easy for young children.
Teacher Lesson Plan Methodology
The teacher instructs the children to form a circle on the floor and sit. After showing the cover of the book to all the students, the teacher points to the title and the author’s name while saying the words. This is a lift-the-flaps board book, so the teacher should stop whenever there is a flap in the book and invite the children to predict what will happen next.
By weaving carefully chosen questions into the natural reading flow of the story, the teacher encourages the children to anticipate events and concentrate on the story. Here are some recommended discussion questions to help the children understand the story of Spot the Dog:
- What are Spot and Helen doing?
- Who hid the Easter eggs?
- Who found the first egg?
- Where was the first egg hidden?
- What did Spot find in the tree?
- How many places did the bunny hide?
- How many eggs did Spot find?
- How many eggs did Helen find?
- How many total eggs did the two friends find?
Spot the Dog Sequencing Activity
The following supplies are needed to prepare a sequencing activity to correspond with Spot’s Easter story. Teachers prepare the sequencing pictures prior to class time.
- Pictures of Spot (or a dog), an elephant, bench, flower bed, tree, sack, fruit basket, grandfather clock
- Glue
- Blank index cards or cardstock
Assemble the sequencing cards by gluing the pictures to the index cards in the following order, with the animal pictures on the front of the card and the object pictures on the reverse:
- Spot and bench
- Elephant and flower bed
- Elephant and sack
- Spot and fruit basket
- Spot and grandfather clock
- Spot and tree
If the class size is large, teachers may want to make several sets of sequencing cards so the children do not wait for turns and become frustrated. Guide the students through the egg finding sequence by asking conversational questions such as these:
- Who found the first egg?
- Where was the first egg found?
- Where did Helen find the second egg?
- How easy was it to find the third egg?
Pre-writing Skills Exercise
The teacher helps the children make simple sentences to answer the questions. Encouraging the children to respond in full sentences rather than one or two word answers helps develop vocabulary and exercises prewriting skills.
Example:
- Who found the first egg?
- Spot found the first egg.
- Where was the first egg found?
- Spot found the first egg on the bench.
Children learn by creative play, exploration, and the process of discovery. Allow the children plenty of time to experiment with the sequencing cards to connect this new learning to prior learning and supply a deeper learning experience. With elementary learners, the process is more valuable than the product, so letting the children touch and see is more important than getting the sequence exactly right.
By using this Spot the Dog teacher lesson plan for Easter, children experience many layers of learning opportunities. At the conclusion of the lesson, the elementary children have increased their prereading and prewriting skills and are becoming familiar with forming complete sentences. They have learned to create patterns and identify event sequences by connecting pictures with a story.
Donna Cosmato - Donna is a Certified Image Consultant, author and public speaker, whose first book Buying Your First Home? will be available in bookstores ...
