Date: November 3, 2003

Grade Level: 1, 2, 3

Subject(s):

• Language arts/Literature/Children's Literature
• Arts

Duration: 45 minutes

Description: Utilizes the story "The Rainbow Fish" by Marcus Pfister to teach students about friendship, sharing, and reading comprehension. A variety of situations in the real world involve knowing how to treat friends and children should have a firm concept of friendship in order to do so. In addition, understanding how to draw meaning out of literature will promote higher order thinking skills.

Goals: Florida Sunshine State Standards

• LA.A.2.1.1: The student uses the reading process effectively - determines the main idea or essential message from text and identifies supporting information.

Objectives: Language arts students will individually demonstrate comprehension by completing a ten-question worksheet with 90% accuracy. The questions will assess their comprehension of the story.

Teacher Materials: The Rainbow Fish , by Marcus Pfister; poster board of giant fish; 10-question comprehension worksheet *

Student Materials: Art supplies

Procedure:

Anticipatory Set: “Have any of you ever had something that you didn’t want to share with a friend? What was it? Well this is a story about a fish that didn’t want to share something that was special to him. Do you want to see what happens to him?”

Objective: Tell the students that today’s lesson is about friendship.

Input:

1. Ask the students, “Have any of you ever had something that you didn’t want to share with a friend? What was it? Is sharing a quality of a good friend?”
2. Explain to the students that this is a story about a fish that didn’t want to share something that was special to him. Tell the students the title of the book is The Rainbow Fish.
3. Stop at the end of each page to summarize and to answer “why” questions about the characters and actions.
4. After reading, go over the importance of friendship with the children and make a list on the board of qualities that friends have or should have.
5. Show the students the poster of the “scale-less” fish and explain that they are going to work together to make their very own classroom’s friendship fish.

Check for Understanding:

    Low level questions

• Did the other fish like Rainbow Fish?
• Why did the little blue fish want one of his scales?
• Was Rainbow Fish sad when he had to give away one of his scales?

    High level questions

• Why do you think that sharing made Rainbow Fish so happy?
• If you were Rainbow Fish, would you share a scale or keep it?
• What lesson do you think Rainbow Fish has learned?

Guided Practice:

1. Have the students go back to their seats and hand out a scale to each child.
2. Tell the students to write a quality that they would like a friend to have, or something they do for a friend. It could be a sentence or a word.
3. Have students decorate their scales with crayons, markers, glitter glue or paint.
4. After they have finished with their scale, put the big fish poster on the wall and add their scales to it.

Independent Practice: Students are to take home a ten question worksheet with questions about the story.

Assessment: Teacher will continuously monitor the students while they are completing tasks. Teacher will also monitor participation during discussions and the activity. Students will individually demonstrate comprehension by completing a ten question worksheet with 90% accuracy.