Standard Lesson

The Big Green Monster Teaches Phonics in Reading and Writing

Grades
K - 2
Lesson Plan Type
Standard Lesson
Estimated Time
Three 45-minute sessions
Author
Publisher
ILA
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Overview

Go Away, Big Green Monster!—Ed Emberley's tale about a scary, multicolored monster—is used to help students build their reading fluency and word recognition skills. In this lesson, students chorally read the story and then point out familiar color words or sight words that appear in the story. After finishing the story, students are introduced to four different literacy center activities that include participating in a read along, building word families with story words, playing a memory game with color words from the story, and retelling story events using sentence strips. In the sessions that follow, students create their own artwork of the big green monster and use that artwork to help them write a story. Students use both self- and peer-editing to improve their writing. Completed stories are either published on the Internet or in a class book.

From Theory to Practice

Phonics teaching and learning in whole language classrooms: New evidence from research (Dahl)
  • Teachers can assess the skill progress of students at point of use to help plan individualized instruction. By giving one-on-one instruction during reading and writing experiences, teachers can address what students need instructionally at the moment. This tailored instruction helps children progress developmentally and provides teachers with developmental information to use during large- and small-group activities.

  • Phonics skills are most effectively taught within the context of meaningful, enjoyable reading and writing activities to maximize application of concepts.

  • Phonics instruction should be distributed across a wide range of daily language activities. Writing experiences serve as an essential context for developing phonics knowledge.

Common Core Standards

This resource has been aligned to the Common Core State Standards for states in which they have been adopted. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, CCSS alignments are forthcoming.

State Standards

This lesson has been aligned to standards in the following states. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, standard alignments are not currently available for that state.

NCTE/IRA National Standards for the English Language Arts

  • 1. Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.
  • 3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
  • 5. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
  • 12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).

Materials and Technology

  • Go Away, Big Green Monster! by Ed Emberley (Little, Brown & Co., 1993)
  • Chart paper

  • Colored markers or crayons

  • Index cards and white construction paper

  • Pointer (optional)

  • Sentence strips

  • Computers with Internet access

Printouts

Websites

Preparation

1. Write the text from Go Away, Big Green Monster! on chart paper using colored markers or crayons to match the color words found in the story.
2. Gather index cards and markers for students to make a memory card game during a literacy center activity.
3. Copy each line of the story onto sentence strips for students to use in a literacy center activity.
4. Gather a class set of markers or crayons and white construction paper for students to draw their monsters.
5. Create a big green monster pointer from felt or construction paper to use during the shared and paired readings activities (optional).

Student Objectives

Students will

  • Increase oral reading fluency by reading a selected story multiple times during shared and paired reading activities

  • Recognize and be able to read high-frequency vocabulary words (e.g., colors) in the story

  • Recognize and be able to read sight vocabulary words in the story

  • Generate word families for words in the story by differentiating onset and rime

  • Apply phonics skills by writing stories about their big green monsters and publishing them online

  • Develop editing skills as they read and revise their own stories and those of their peers

Session 1: Shared Reading (30 minutes)

1. Seat the students together in the shared reading area.
2. Display the text from Go Away, Big Green Monster! on chart paper and introduce the story to the whole class.
3. Read the story with students chorally. Then have students reread the story several times using other read-aloud formats, such as boys and girls, left side and right side, popcorn reading (i.e., having students voluntarily "jump in" to read a line of the story), and individual volunteers. Reading the story multiple times in alternative formats builds fluency, adds interest, and speeds word recognition.
4. Point out the colored words in the story, asking if students recognize the color name from the print color.
5. Review the sight words and point out the known words in the story, connecting them to words already listed on the class word wall.
6. Explain the literacy center activities to follow.

Literacy Center Activities (30 minutes per activity)

Note: A parent volunteer, classroom aide, or older student buddy may be helpful when conducting center activities with kindergarten and first-grade students.

Literacy centers can be organized and managed in a variety of ways. Typically, teachers can create literacy centers that coincide with guided reading instruction. While the teacher meets with one group of students for guided reading, other groups rotate among various literacy centers set up around the classroom. Centers can be created by simply setting out literacy activities on a table or they can be separated into specifically designed areas of the classroom. Teachers may want to assign particular students to certain centers based on learning styles, needs, or strengths. Ideally, no more than four students in this age group should work together in a literacy center. To ensure that students work cooperatively in the centers, teachers can provide a Literacy Center Checklist for students to complete.

1. Computer center. Have pairs of students listen to the audio for the online version of Go Away, Big Green Monster! and read along with the text to practice fluency and word recognition skills.
2. Memory card game center. Have students work in groups of three or four at this literacy center. Each student will need to copy the color words from the story onto index cards to use for a memory game. To play the game, students combine the individually made sets of color cards into one deck. The deck is then laid out, face down, into a matrix. Students take turns turning over pairs of cards to make a match of two color words, reading each color word aloud as cards are turned over.
3. Word family center. In this literacy center, students choose words from the story Go Away, Big Green Monster! to generate word family lists. Direct the students to begin their word family lists by selecting words from the story that they already know. Have them drop the beginning letter (onset) and create a list of new words by substituting different beginning letters to the word ending (rime). Students can then add these words to their personal dictionaries.
4. Sentence strip center. Have student work cooperatively in pairs to arrange sentence strips with the lines of the story in correct order. Include the chart paper with the text of the story in this center for student reference. This activity encourages rereading of the story in an alternative format to build word recognition, oral reading fluency, and understanding of story sequencing. The center provides an opportunity for self-assessment as the pairs of students can compare their sequencing of the strips to the actual story.

Session 2: Art Workshop (30 minutes)

1. Read the story again with students, and invite each student to imagine the big green monster and draw a picture of what it looks like. Make sure that students match the color words in the story to the body parts of the monster they draw (e.g., yellow eyes).
2. Finished artwork can be washed with diluted black tempera paint and matted or mounted for display. The tempura paint wash will give the monster illustrations a darkened, spooky background.

Session 3: Writing Workshop (45 minutes)

1. Read the story again with students to introduce the writing workshop.
2. Have students imagine their own big green monsters. What do their monsters do? How do their monsters act? Students can use their illustrations from Session 2 to visualize what their monsters look like.
3. Give students the opportunity to share their big green monster ideas either with a partner, a small group, or with the entire class. This sharing session enhances oral language skills.
4. Invite students to begin writing stories about their big green monsters, including details from what they imagined.
5. Circulate around the classroom as students write, conferencing with individual students as needed to teach and reteach phonics skills during the writing process.
6. After students write the first draft of their stories, direct them to reread their stories and self-edit for one particular writing convention. For example, direct students to reread their own stories, looking for a period at the end of each sentence. Then direct students to read the story of a peer, and edit for one particular writing convention. For example, direct children to peer-edit for descriptive word choice. Continue to circulate among students to teach and reteach punctuation and grammar skills at the point of use.
7. Invite students to publish their stories online at Kids on the Net by clicking the "Submit Your Writing" link. You may need permission from the students' caregivers before having them submit their stories for online publication. Check with your school administrator for information on your school's policy on this issue.
8. Create a class book by binding printed stories and monster illustrations into a book. Place the class book in the classroom library. A photocopied version can be made for take-home reading.

Extensions

Home/school connection:

  • Have students play the memory card game at home with their family members to reinforce color words. Place the cards from the memory game in a plastic bag for take-home use.

  • Invite students to take the class book home to read and share with their family members.

  • Have students work with family members to arrange sentence strips from the story in the proper order.

  • Coordinate with another class and have students use their class book for a Readers Theatre. This is a good opportunity to access fluency and word recognition skills.

  • Encourage students to use the interactive Construct-a-Word for additional practice creating word families.

  • Use the ReadWriteThink lesson "Powerful Writing: Description in Creating Monster Trading Cards" to extend the writing activity and give students the opportunity to improve the quality of descriptions in their writing. Although this lesson is designed for grades 3–5, it can likely be modified for younger students as well.

Student Assessment / Reflections

  • Use the Literacy Center Checklist and Assessment Rubric to assess students' work.

  • Assess each student's reading fluency during paired reading at the computer center. Guided reading groups, using copies of the story, may be an alternative assessment of each student's reading fluency.

  • Assess each student's ability to recognize and read color words while playing the memory card game.

  • Assess phonemic segmentation skills by reviewing word family lists created from self-selected words from the story.

  • Administer sight word inventory to assess increased speed and accuracy in reading sight and high-frequency words.

  • Use the big green monster stories to assess each student's stage of writing development.

  • For struggling readers, use the story and each student's big green monster story to record reading miscues.
  • Student Interactives
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  • Lesson Plans
    • |
  • Strategy Guides
Grades
K - 2
|
Student Interactive
|
Learning About Language
Construct-a-Word

Using Construct-a-Word, students learn letter-sound correspondence by combining a beginning letter or blend to a word ending to create words.

Grades
3 - 5
|
Lesson Plan
|
Standard Lesson
Powerful Writing: Description in Creating Monster Trading Cards
Students create their own monster trading cards using "powerful," vivid language to describe their creatures.
Grades
Grades
K - 5
|
Strategy Guide
Choral Reading
During choral reading, students read together orally. Repeated, supported reading helps students read with greater expression and read unfamiliar words with greater ease.
Laura Perry
K-12 Teacher
The lesson is awesome and all of the activities foster literacy. The one comment I would make that tagging this lesson as a Phonics lesson is a little misleading. In all of your information, including the activities themselves, Phonics seems to play a minor role rather than a major role. Although similar, Phonemic Awareness is not Phonics. Most assuradely the children are using their Phonics skills to decode the story; I wouldn't necessarily change the lesson, I might just change the tags.
Evelyn Saenz
K-12 Teacher
I loved your idea of having the children create their own color word cards for the Go Away, Big Green Monster Literacy Center. I used to make dozens of decks of cards for children when I taught Spanish but it always seemed that I was learning more than they were. When I switched to having them make the cards it was amazing how much more they retained.

I hope you don't mind but I have added a link to this article on my Go Away Big Green Monster Unit Study page.
http://www.squidoo.com/go-away-big-green-monster
Sarah Goddard
K-12 Teacher
A wonderful lesson from one of my former teachers! I am so thrilled to find this!
Laura Perry
K-12 Teacher
The lesson is awesome and all of the activities foster literacy. The one comment I would make that tagging this lesson as a Phonics lesson is a little misleading. In all of your information, including the activities themselves, Phonics seems to play a minor role rather than a major role. Although similar, Phonemic Awareness is not Phonics. Most assuradely the children are using their Phonics skills to decode the story; I wouldn't necessarily change the lesson, I might just change the tags.
Evelyn Saenz
K-12 Teacher
I loved your idea of having the children create their own color word cards for the Go Away, Big Green Monster Literacy Center. I used to make dozens of decks of cards for children when I taught Spanish but it always seemed that I was learning more than they were. When I switched to having them make the cards it was amazing how much more they retained.

I hope you don't mind but I have added a link to this article on my Go Away Big Green Monster Unit Study page.
http://www.squidoo.com/go-away-big-green-monster
Sarah Goddard
K-12 Teacher
A wonderful lesson from one of my former teachers! I am so thrilled to find this!
Evelyn Saenz
K-12 Teacher
I loved your idea of having the children create their own color word cards for the Go Away, Big Green Monster Literacy Center. I used to make dozens of decks of cards for children when I taught Spanish but it always seemed that I was learning more than they were. When I switched to having them make the cards it was amazing how much more they retained.

I hope you don't mind but I have added a link to this article on my Go Away Big Green Monster Unit Study page.
http://www.squidoo.com/go-away-big-green-monster
Sarah Goddard
K-12 Teacher
A wonderful lesson from one of my former teachers! I am so thrilled to find this!
Laura Perry
K-12 Teacher
The lesson is awesome and all of the activities foster literacy. The one comment I would make that tagging this lesson as a Phonics lesson is a little misleading. In all of your information, including the activities themselves, Phonics seems to play a minor role rather than a major role. Although similar, Phonemic Awareness is not Phonics. Most assuradely the children are using their Phonics skills to decode the story; I wouldn't necessarily change the lesson, I might just change the tags.

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