“The Squirrel”

1. “The Squirrel” Anonymous Becky Miles’ Poem Lesson

2. Whisky Frisky, Hippity Hop, Up he goes To the tree top! Whirly, Twirly, Round and round Down he scampers To the ground Furly, Curly What a tail! Tall as a feather Broad as a snail! Where’s his supper? In the shell, Snappity, crackity Out it fell!

3. Day 1 Thinking Critically • What is a squirrel? • What do squirrels like to do? • Where can you find a squirrel? • What are some words that describe squirrels and what they do?

4. Day 2 Exploring Language • Some of the difficult words in the poem: scampers, whisky, whirly, broad, furly • For this day, the students can play a game of charades with the words from the poem. Some of the words that they could act out would be: whirly, twirly, scamper, round and round, hippity, hop, up, tree, fell. • Another activity would be to play vocabulary Pictionary in group of four. One student draws a card and the other students need to try and guess the word they are drawing. This poem works well for this because there are a lot of descriptive words including: ground, tree, snail, tall, feather, round, shell, tail, up, and down.

5. Day 3 Exploring Language • We will talk about the punctuation in the poem. (Ex. question marks, exclamation points, commas) • The students can write the poem in the form that the poem takes shape of. They could write it twirling on the page or in the shape of a tree. They will use the words to help determine what shape to create. See next slide for an example.

7. Day 4 Exploring Language • Consonant blends • Broad, crackity, frisky, ground, tree, scampers, frisky, whisky, snail, snappity, shell, the, feather, what, where, whisky, whirly, crackity, squirrel • Vowels • Long a- a, tail, snail, • Short a- what, and, tall, as, snappity, crackity, • Short i- whisky, hippity, frisky, whirly, twirly, his, in, it • Long o- goes, • Short o- to, top, broad, out

8. Vowel combinations • Tail, snail, feather, tree, broad, goes, round, ground, out, squirrel • R, L, W Controlled Vowels • Feather, where, supper, scamper, squirrel, whirly, twirly, furly, curly, down • Syllables • 1 syllable- hop, up, he, goes, to, the, tree, top, round, and, down, ground, what, a, tail, tall, as, broad, snail, his, where’s, in, the , shell, out, it, fell • 2 syllables- whisky, frisky, whirly, twirly, scampers, furly, curly, feather, supper, • 3 syllables- hippity, snappity, crackity,

9. Prefixes/suffixes • Whirly, twirly, furly, curly; feather, scamper, supper; whisky, whirly, what, where • Plurals • (N/A) • Contractions • Where’s • Compound words • (N/A) • Silent letters • Crackity, goes, feather, supper • Sight words • The, and, a, in, it, he, as, his, what, up, out, down

10. Day 5 Processing Information • Today, we will sing the poem. It goes to the tune of “Wags the Dog.” • Once the students learn the song, they can add actions where the poem describes what is happening. • Scampering, whirly, twirly, down, up, hop, round and round, down to the ground, tail, tall, broad, fell