"Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad"
Sample Lesson Plan

Step 3: Group Projects: Research Stage

Target Objectives

Students will deepen their knowledge of the Frog and Toad books by applying research skills to gather information for group projects.
Students will generate ideas for original poems by exploring poetry written by other children.
Students will contribute to group projects and practice team collaboration skills.

Student Activities

Children divide into cooperative learning groups to develop a project related to the book. Project options are:
- Illustrated compositions (such as stories, poems) based on the literary themes presented in the Frog and Toad books.
- Illustrated non-fiction reports (such as information booklets, charts, slide show presentations) focused on scientific information about frogs and toads.

For the Fiction Writing Groups:

To stimulate ideas for poetry writing, children should explore poems written by Ms. Soo's class in California. Students should pick one poem that they like the best, and describe why they like it. Picking up on the themes in the Frog and Toad books, students should brainstorm ideas for poems about "What to do if you are a frog", "What to do if you are a toad", and "How to be a great friend."

For the Non-fiction Writing Groups:

To learn more factual information about frogs and toads, children will explore several web sites that were collected and annotated by teacher Donna Bingham using a tool called TrackStar. The collection is called "Frogs and Toads: Science and Literature Connections". Students should take notes about the information they learn from these web sites, so they can include them in their final reports.

Electronic Resources

Assessment

Children's notes about frogs and toads (information they learn from the web sites), and their poem ideas, will be included in their portfolios.

Impact of Technology: In what ways (if any) will technology enhance students' learning experiences in these activities?

Children will explore suggested web sites to learn more about frogs and toads or to read and respond to the writings of children from all over the world.
Children will supplement their traditional classroom sources of information with web resources. TrackStar provides scaffolding so children will search only on web sites that have been previewed and selected. Since this "Track" was created several months ago, I might have to modify it before I use it, to clean up any links that have become out of date.

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