Guest Blogger: Eric Carle Author Study

I am so excited to be a guest blogger on Tales of Frogs and Cupcakes!  I am new to blogging and sharing my creations with others, so I am excited that Janaye has given me this opportunity! Janaye and I teach first grade across the hall from each other.  We have a wonderful first grade team that does a lot of collaboration, shares the lesson planning load, and has a lot of fun doing what we all love - teaching! 

As you have seen in her earlier post, Janaye created an awesome Eric Carle Math Pack to correlate with our Eric Carle Author Study.  While she was creating the math pack, I was busy creating an Author Study of Eric Carle book and slide show to use during our author study reading lessons.  The main focus of our author's study was to identify characters and plot of the author's books and then to compare and contrast the different books using these elements.

We began our author study by learning a little about the author with a PowerPoint presentation and a video about Eric Carle.  We learned a little bit about him each day and took notes in our notebooks.  We also filled our classrooms with Eric Carle books. (I currently have 68 books checked out from our public library, not to mention what I have from our school library!) As students read Carle books on their own, they recorded them in their notebook.

 Since this was our first of two author studies we planned, we completed the first story map on the Promethean board as a class and students did not record it in their book.  On the second day, we discussed it as a class and I wrote on the Promethean board as students also wrote in their books. The third day, students completed the story map independently after a class discussion.  We completed story maps for The Mixed Up Chameleon, A House for Hermit Crab, and Do You Want to be My Friend?. All three selections provided an obvious plot for students to identify and a clearly identifiable beginning, middle, and end.

 After reading the three books, students identified their favorite book and took a favorite book survey among their table group.  Then we compiled the results from each table to determine the class favorite.

The top two class favorites were then selected to complete a Venn Diagram to compare the characters and plot of each book.  The Venn Diagram was completed in a whole group discussion.

I am so excited to be able to share with your the PowerPoint presentation and the Eric Carle Author Study Notebook! Click the links below to download.