If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
By Laura Numeroff
Organization
Lesson Focus: Organizing ideas using graphic organizers
Focus Grade Level: First Grade/Second Grade
Time Frame: Two days
Focus Text/Author: If You Give a Mouse a Cookie / Laura Numeroff
Supporting Texts:
Any of Laura Numeroff’s stories including the following:
· If You Give a Moose a Muffin
· If You Give a Pig a Pancake
· If you Take a Mouse to School
Other Materials:
· Organizer one (Question/answer format)
· Organizer two (Square word map organizer)
· Organizer three (Wheel visual organizer)
· Chart paper
· Markers
Ohio Academic Content Standards Lesson Focus:
Standard: Writing Processes
K-2 Benchmark:
C. Use organizers to clarify ideas for writing assignments.
1st Grade Level Indicators:
4. Use organizational strategies (e.g., brainstorming, lists, webs and Venn diagrams) to plan writing.
5. Organize writing to include a beginning, middle and end.
7. Mimic language from literature when appropriate.
Book Summary:
This is a roundabout story that goes full circle with a chain of events with a mouse. It starts by giving it a cookie and then each action leads to the next. If you're going to go around giving an exuberantly bossy rodent a cookie, you'd best be prepared to do one or two more favors for it before your day is through. For example, he'll certainly need a glass of milk to wash down that cookie, won't he? And you can't expect him to drink the milk without a straw, can you? By the time our hero is finished granting all the mouse's very urgent requests--and cleaning up after him--it's no wonder his head is becoming a bit heavy.
About the Author:
Laura Numeroff was born in Brooklyn, New York and grew up loving art, books and music. She loved Dr. Seuss, Eloise, and Stuart Little books. She grew up writing and drawing stories for her own books. She started going to college for fashion and ended up switching back to writing for children’s books. She is a best seller of many books including the If you Give a... books and What Mommies Do Best.
Before the Lesson:
All students are pretty familiar with Laura Numeroff’s books. This lesson should help students understand how authors can organize their writing and work in different ways. Students should focus on making a roundabout story. Before this lesson, there should be some student knowledge of stories going full circle.
Things to Remember:
This lesson should be taught towards the end of first grade. This is a more difficult concept and may take students multiple lessons to understand how to apply this strategy to their own writing. There are three different organizers in this lesson. Decide which organizer will benefit your students the most. The first is a question/answer response they can use to guide their writing. This should be used when students understand organizers completely and can read the questions accurately. The second organizer is a square organizer that is more geared toward writing out each part of the cycle in the story. If students need more visual support, use the third organizer with your students first. It is a picture planner that will help with the roundabout story for early learning of the skill. This lesson will be based around using the wheel organizer but you may adjust it to using the organizer that best fits your students at the time.
Lesson Steps:
Additional Resources:
Day One
1. First, read If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.
2. Discuss how this is a roundabout story. Is there a pattern in this story? How does it go in circles? What words did Laura use to help her organize the story in a circle?
3. Write down different words that students identify or discover through discussion in which Laura uses to organize this story.
4. Give students idea wheels to create their own story about giving a mouse something.
5. The students will link each event together using similar language as Laura. Encourage students to come full circle that it will lead back to whatever the mouse is asking to get in the beginning of the story.
a. You can do this activity with peers or as a guided lesson with the teacher as a model.
b. If students have not had sufficient practice with concept, follow a guided lesson model.
c. If you do this as a guided lesson, have the students create their idea of what a mouse would ask for after he asks for a book. Tell the students that the end has to come back to asking for a book. What could he ask for down to lead back to the book? (glasses, going to bed, getting his book bag, etc.)
6. Have students retell their class story to a partner using the wheel organizer. How did using Laura’s strategy help us organize this silly story?
7. Post the class example to use as a model for future lessons.
Day Two
1. Review the concept of roundabout story by reviewing how Laura organized her story.
2. Discuss how this method of organization can help you as a writer.
3. Review the wheels created the day before.
4. Model creating several sentences using the wheel to start the story on chart paper.
5. Have the students use the wheels to write out their story about their mouse.
6. Students need to share their stories with a peer. Monitor sharing and look for students that accurately used the wheel to write their story using good organization.
7. Share the excellent examples. Identify the successful parts of using organization in their stories.
8. Give students an opportunity to fix and re-share any stories that were not completely organized. (This is a definite possibility. The students that mastered the concept in the first activity can create their own animal or roundabout wheels for another story while the other students are working on their first story. )
9. Post an excellent model for students to use. Post both the wheel and the story so other students can see how the students transferred the knowledge into their writing.
10. PRACTICE! PRACTICE! Use the other Laura Numeroff stories to continue to create roundabout stories using organizers. This concept will not be mastered in one day. It takes much practice for students to independently and consistently use this skill.
PowerPoint version of Story
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