Monday, February 27, 2012

Read Across America and Dr. Seuss

Dr. Seuss is quite an interesting person that you might not know much about other than his name and the children's books he wrote. Those in themselves are quite an accomplishment. The fact that they are still as popular as they are is quite a testament. Some of my personal favorites are The Lorax and Hooray for Diffendoofer Day (which was completed with his words and sketches after he died.) March 2nd has become Read Across America Day in his honor, and I thought this would be a great time for one or more of several lesson ideas with students. There are so many directions you can go with this - timelines, author studies, art class analysis of his style, and more. This site has many links to sketches, videos, biography info, and more. Here are a few ideas that I thought went a little different direction than the regular author study unit if you want something a little different or for older kids.

- Getting information from a variety of sources. This would be a great time to do something like show these video interview clips of his wife talking about him and their life together. Talk about getting information from people or video sources and how that might work the same or differently than a book or website.

- Talk about his political cartoons and how you can convey meaning in this manner. How can you get information from this format? This could also be used for inference lessons. This one for example has lots of imagery, inference, history, etc.

- Discuss advertising and the messages companies are trying to send, who they are aiming products at. Look at his advertising artwork samples and talk about the messages they are sending. (click the logos at the top of the page to see other images.) Would you buy the product?
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What is your favorite Dr. Seuss lesson idea or book?

2 comments:

  1. Hooray for Diffendoofer Day is one of my favorites too!

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    1. I don't know if you are allowed to be in education and not love that one! :)

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