Dr.

Seuss: And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street

1st Grade
Giselle Taraboletti
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Integration of Learning Outcomes

a. Students will write an outlandish description of something normal that they see on
their way home from school.
Standards
a. CC.1.4.1.M Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events.
Anticipatory Set
a. Read And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street to the students.
b. Discuss how the boy turned something ordinary into something so exaggerated.
Procedures
a. Project the West Broad Run Road template onto the board.
b. Pass out a sheet of lined paper to each student.
c. Explain to the students that they are going to think of something they see on the
way home from school and write that down in the first sentence of their paper.
d. Fill out the template on the board to show the students an example.
i. On my way home from school, I saw a tree.
e. Next, the students will write, No, it wasnt a/an [object]. What I really saw was.
They will turn the normal, every day thing that they saw into something
exaggerated.
i. No, it wasnt a tree. What I really saw was a great big skyscraper where
animals lived. The apartments were crowded, filled up to the brim with
squirrels and rabbits and birds and a toad.
f. The students will finish their piece with And to think that I saw it on West Broad
Run Road.
g. Next, the students will draw a picture on a blank piece of paper that goes with
their writing.
h. Once the drawing is finished, the students will glue both the writing and picture
onto a piece of construction paper to be hung in the hallway.
Differentiation
a. Encourage students who need a challenge to include rhyming in their writing.
b. Green Group: 3 descriptive sentences (In addition to the three sentences from the
template)
c. Blue/Purple/Orange Groups: 2 descriptive sentences (In addition to the three
sentences from the template)
Closure
a. Once the writings are hung up, take the students on a tour of their classmates
work.
Formative/Summative Assessment of Students
a. Formative assessment: Read the students writing before they move on to their
drawing to check for the number of sentences, correctness of spelling and
grammar etc.
Materials/Equipment
a. And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street by Dr. Seuss (1)
b. Writing Template Example

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i. Digital if used for a writing piece & paper if activity done as a center
c. Landscape oriented lined paper
d. Blank paper
e. Pencils/Erasers/Crayons
Technology
a. SMARTBoard
Reflection on Planning
a. This activity is going to be completed during Dr. Seuss week, so I think the
students will be engaged and excited about it. The biggest challenge of this
activity will likely be time because there is very little time between morning
centers and lunch during which Writing takes place. However, if I need to, I can
have the students finish their pages in the time after lunch and before Calendar.
Reflection on Instruction
a. The activity turned out very well. The students had a lot of fun, and we created a
whole class book that I was able to read to the students. They enjoyed hearing
their writing read aloud and their illustrations shown to the class in the same
manner that I read published books to them. When I do this activity, or activities
similar to it, in the future, I will likely, depending on grade level, include a
template page where the students can just fill in the missing parts. This is because,
despite the fact that what they were meant to copy was written on the board, many
of the students did not directly copy the template sentences and wrote other things
that construed a similar message.