Book Used in Lesson Plan
Where the Wild Things Are written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak
Clarifying Objectives
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.1.2 Retell stories, including key details, and demonstrate understanding of their central message or lesson.
- CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.1.3 Describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details.
Focus
The teacher will read Where the Wild Things Are to begin the lesson, but will first anticipate the reading to get the class excited about the book. The teacher can pose questions before the reading after the students see the book cover like "what do you think will happen based on the cover and the title", "why is the little boy dressed like that", "what is the boy doing with the monsters".
Teacher Input
As the teacher is reading the book, he/she will stop in different sections and ask questions about what is going on and what they think will happen next in the beginning, middle, and the end. After reading, the teacher will have the students write down the wild things characteristics (what do they look like- teeth, hair, color, size...; what are they like- nice, mean...) After the students think to themselves about what they think these wild things are like, the teacher will lead a discussion on some of these characteristics and write them down on the board. The teacher will go through all the characters with their descriptions along with the major events that happened in the story.
The students will then get to make a wild thing mask based on their descriptions of the wild thing that they wrote down. They will need paper bags, scissors, glue, construction paper, googly eyes, markers, crayons, feathers, pipe cleaners, yarn, fabric, straws, and scraps of paper. The students can use any of these materials to make their wild thing mask based on how they described it.
The students will then get to make a wild thing mask based on their descriptions of the wild thing that they wrote down. They will need paper bags, scissors, glue, construction paper, googly eyes, markers, crayons, feathers, pipe cleaners, yarn, fabric, straws, and scraps of paper. The students can use any of these materials to make their wild thing mask based on how they described it.
Guided Practice
After the students make their masks, the teacher will divide the classroom into three groups and provide each group with a copy of the book. The teacher will assign page numbers to each group separating the beginning, middle, and the end. The students will work in their group to create their own script of their interpretation of what happened during their assigned section. Each group will have 5 minutes to act out their play that they created for each section of the book. They will retell the story through acting using the masks that they made.
Independent Practice
After acting out the story, the students can write down an alternate ending to it. What is another way the story could end? What would happen if the boy stayed with the wild things? What if the wild things came home with the boy?
How Maurice Sendak related illustrations to the content of books
Maurice Sendak would work very closely with the authors to create exactly what they wanted to represent the books correctly. For A Hold is to Dig, Sendak sat down with the author Krauss and discussed the text before creating the illustrations. He created pictures to represent the text well, and they spread all the pictures and text out on the floor randomly to put together like a puzzle. This book's text was taking from children's words. The book was created from kids. Sendak illustrated pictures of children playing, which impressed Krauss.