Teaching Reading, Writing and Art With "House for a Hermit Crab"

Are you trying to incorporate reading, writing and art into one lesson? That is just what this post is about. In this post I share how my friend Kim Jordano uses "House for a Hermit Crab" to teach comprehension through writing and art.

I am sure most of you know Kimberly Jordano. She is a presenter and kindergarten teacher from California She is the cute, little spunky girl that is tons of fun. I have known her for many years. We met at a conference and became instant friends. I love to go and visit her in Southern California and have enjoyed having here in my "southern" home. While I was visiting Kim, she did an interactive writing lesson using House for a Hermit Crab.  She took the pictures from my Ocean unit and enlarged them 130%.  Now she had large pictures to create a class mural. 

For the first lesson, the children used the text to sequence the pictures to retell the story. *We always want to have children go back to the text. It is not important that they memorize the story, but that they know that good readers go back to the text.  Also, by sequencing the characters we are giving children a comprehension strategy..."If we sequence the pictures, we can use that to help us retell the story."

The kids used tempra paint and sponges to paint the mural. Then, before the paint was dry, they sprinkled glitter!

In another lesson, Kim used interactive writing to record the text.  During the lesson, each of the children had a dry erase board and were writing along as she called individual children to help on the sentence strips. NOTE: On interactive writing, all words are spelled correctly. As you are stretching words, record the sounds the kids hear and you supply the letters for the sounds that they don't hear.

The following day, each child was given a flow map to record the sequence themselves. Provide copies of the text and the interactive writing mural as resources. 

Next, the children created text using the flow map as a resource.