Shel Silverstein Books Lesson Plans

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Shel Silverstein Inspired Quilt Square

Lesson Plan:

​Activity:

Shel Silverstein Inspired Quilt Square

Lesson plan developed by Aurora Tollestrup, BS Ed. 

Age Group:

Preschool

* Lesson plan objective and assessment can be adapted to use this activity with school-age children.

Objectives:  

Children will:

• create their own Shel Silverstein inspired poem and illustration.

Shel Silverstein Inspired Quilt Square

CDA Competency Standard:   

II.6.5a 

• Candidate promotes children’s vocabulary development.
  • ​​​A) Intentionally provides opportunities for children to learn new words

II.6.3a 

• Candidate reads to children in a developmentally appropriate manner.
  • ​​​A) Reads to children engagingly 

Materials: 

• white sheets of paper
• pencils
• thin black marker
• any Shel Silverstein book

Anticipatory Set:

• Read a few poems from any Shel Silverstein book aloud to your group.
  
• While reading the poems, use techniques to read engagingly.
  
• Hold the book so that children can view the illustrations, make eye contact, use voices for different characters and more. 

Procedure: 

• Invite children to create an illustration and corresponding poem in a silly fashion similar to the style of Shel Silverstein.
  
• Children should use pencils to make illustrations similar to those in the book. 
• After the child finishes their illustration, a teacher should then transcribe their poem lines underneath the illustration encouraging the use of new vocabulary or synonyms for common words.
  
• Teach the new words as you go along.
• Hang all of the pictures on a bulletin board or wall with poems in a grid formation to resemble a large poetry quilt.

Assessment: 

• Observe and assess children in being able to connect their illustrations with a silly short poem similar to the nonsense poems of Shel Silverstein. Did they use rhyming words? Were they receptive to new vocabulary words?
  

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Phonemic Awareness

Exposing children to repetitive letter sounds will give them the skills they need to begin to recognize those sounds and eventually read and write them. Poems with alliteration are a goldmine of phonemic awareness practice. Children from a young age can benefit from alliteration, or the repetition of two or more beginning consonant sounds in a group of words. 

Before being able to recognize the letter names, children can recognize the letter sounds. Silverstein poems with alliteration use those letter sounds in a fun and repetitive way that gives children the exposure to the sounds of the letters used in the alliterative sequence. 

Picture Puzzle Piece 
by Shel Silverstein

One picture puzzle piece
Lyin' on the sidewalk,
One picture puzzle piece
Soakin' in the rain.
It might be a button of blue
On the coat of the woman
Who lived in a shoe.
It might be a magical bean,
Or a fold in the red
Velvet robe of a queen.
It might be the one little bite
Of the apple her stepmother
Gave to Snow White.
It might be the veil of a bride
Or a bottle with some evil genie inside.
It might be a small tuft of hair
On the big bouncy belly
Of Bobo the Bear.
It might be a bit of the cloak
Of the Witch of the West
As she melted to smoke.
It might be a shadowy trace
Of a tear that runs down an angel's face.
Nothing has more possibilities
Than one old wet picture puzzle piece.

Here is an example of a Shel Silverstein poem that uses alliteration:

You can see that this poem has a great deal of alliteration. Though it is a long poem, you can take sections from it to work on phonemic awareness with students. Recite one of the lines and ask students to recall the beginning sounds they hear by imitating. Eventually they will be able to tell you the letter names that they hear as well. This can be a valuable tool for assessment and furthering their knowledge of phonemes.