The Cat in the Hat – Dr. Seuss CHARACTER TRAITS AND THEMES

GRADES: 1 AND 2

Character trait: Respect - Acting in a way that shows that I am valuable, you are valuable and we as a group are valuable Basic Need: Fun – The need for fun is the need to find pleasure, to play, to learn and to laugh

OBJECTIVES The learner will: • • • • •

Develop further understanding of the Character Trait: Respect Be able to sequence the events in the story Make text-to-self connections Practice sight words Develop rhyming skills

GRADE LEVEL CONTENT EXPECTATIONS First Grade R.NT.01.05 Respond to individual and multiple texts by finding evidence, discussing, illustrating, and/or writing to reflect, make connections, take a position, and/or show understanding. R.NT.01.03 Identify problem/solution, sequence of events, and sense of story (beginning, middle, and end). R.CM.01.01 Make text-to-self and text-to-text connections and comparisons by activating prior knowledge and connecting personal knowledge and experience to ideas in text through oral and written responses. R.WS.01.06 Make progress in automatically recognizing the basic sight words R.WS.01.04 Use structural cues to recognize one-syllable words, blends and consonant digraphs including: letter sound, onset and rimes, whole word chunks, word families, digraphs th, ch, sh. Second Grade R.NT.02.05 Respond to individual and multiple texts by finding evidence, discussing, illustrating, and/or writing to reflect, make connections, take a position, and/or show understanding. R.CM.02.01 Make text-to-self and text-to-text connections and comparisons by activating prior knowledge, connecting personal knowledge, experience, and understanding of others to ideas in text through oral and written responses. R.WS.02.06 Make progress in automatically recognizing the basic sight words

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RESOURCES Trade Book: The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss Other Trade Books: Seuss (1963). The Cat in the Hat Comes Back Random House Books for Young Readers Stover, J. A. (1989). If Everyone Did Journey Forth

ESTIMATED TIME PARAMETERS One day

More than one day

Mini-unit

INTRODUCTION Dr. Seuss’s birthday is March 2! Hold a class meeting to discuss activities that students like to participate in on a rainy day. What types of feelings do they have on a rainy day? Discuss rainy day activities, and then create a rainy day bulletin board by having the children list their favorite things to do on a rainy day. Have them place their ideas on a cut-out of a raindrop. Place the raindrops on the board around a picture of a house and a cat in a hat. Title the board "Fun in the Rain.”

INSTRUCTION Read aloud the book, The Cat in the Hat. Journal Ideas Discuss times when it took a lot of courage for you to tell something to your parents. What would you do if a stranger came to your home and you were all alone? (Discuss what strangers are.) How would you stop the Cat if he came into your house?

ACTIVITY IDEAS Activity 1 Get ready to read by having the children learn sight words found in the story. Give each student one piece of construction paper. Have them make it a book by folding it in half and decorating the front with the title Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss. Write the following words on the board, and then have the students write them on lined paper and place them in their book: shine, play, take, mother, cut, two, there, day, cold, something, want, head, wall, should, thing, nothing, saw, our, house, said, white, red, cat , why, when, could, should, alone, have, these, was, good, what, like, know, little, looked, your, this, you. Practice these words often. Activity 2 In The Cat in the Hat, the children were told not to have a guest when their mother was not home. Discuss the various rules that students have in their households. Depending on the ability levels of your students, invite them to write or draw a list of rules they must follow at home. Discuss how American Literature

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following their parents’ rules show respect. Activity 3 Ask the students to sequence the events in the story. Place the following sentences on a piece of paper in random order: • It is raining, so Sally and her brother have nothing to do. • The Cat in the Hat comes to the house. • The Cat in the Hat wants to do tricks, but the fish tells him to go away. • The Cat in the Hat does not listen to the fish and starts to do tricks and messes up the house. • Mother is on her way home. • The Cat in the Hat cleans the house and leaves. Mother comes home. • Mother asks the children about their day. • The children do not know if they should tell their mother about their day. Ask each student to cut out the strips and then place them on a piece of paper in the correct order. This activity is also conducive to using as a learning center in your classroom. Write each sentence on a sentence strip, and then have students place the sentences in the sequence on a pocket chart. Activity 4 After reading the book one time, ask the students to name a few rhyming words they can remember from the book. As the students name these words, record them so everyone can see. Next, tell the students that they will use this list of words to make their own poem. Base the expectations for the amount of words students must use on the age and ability levels of your group. For instance, if this is for a first grade class, have the students use ten of the twenty words on the board. If this is for second grade, require fourteen of the twenty words. Activity 5 – Options for Fun •

Count and list objects that the cat can balance. Have a relay race balancing an eraser on the heads of students.

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Ask students to design a machine that would clean up their rooms.

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Have students make a hat that resembles the one that Cat in the Hat wears.

EVALUATION/ASSESSMENT 1. Successful placement of the sentence strips will assess that students are able to sequence the events in a story. 2. Students’ successful participation in discussions and activities will assess their understanding of the character trait, respect, and the basic need of fun. 3. Journal entries and “Rainy Day” bulletin board activity can be an evaluation of students’ abilities to personally connect with the text. 4. Successful completion of the sight word book will assess their ability to identify and apply common sight words. 5. Writing the rhyming poem will assess students’ abilities to identify structural cues for identifying words that rhyme.

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Raindrop Template

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