seussbio

Lesson 1

Aims:

1. Who was Dr. Seuss?

2. What type of information is included in a biography?

3. What information can we find about the life of Dr. Seuss by reading Oh The Places he Went by Maryann Weidt?

4. How can we search for information about Dr. Seuss on the World Wide Web?

Materials:

Oh The Places He Went by Marion Weidt

Happy Birthday To You by Dr. Seuss

Computers with Internet Access

Vocabulary:

biography	illustrator	genre	humorous	cartoon
publisher	imagination	freelance	university	editor-in-chief

Motivation:

Create a KWL chart like the one below: Elicit from students information that they already know about Dr. Seuss. What do you know about Dr. Seuss? What books have you read? What is your favorite Dr. Seuss book?

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT DR. SEUSS?	WHAT INFORMATION DO WE WANT TO KNOW ABOUT DR. SEUSS?	WHAT DID WE LEARN ABOUT DR. SEUSS?
Dr. Seuss is the author of children's books.	Where was Dr. Seuss born?	Springfield, Massachusetts
Books written by Dr. Seuss include: The Cat In The Hat, How The Grinch Stole Christmas	Where did Dr. Seuss live?	Springfield, Massachusetts
	What is Dr. Seuss' real name?	Theodor Seuss Geisel
	Why did he become an author?	Ted's sister used to make up stories and words for Ted. His mother read stories to him. Ted loved books. Ted's friends encouraged him to write by praising his funny stories. Ted's family and teachers also encouraged him to write.
	Why did he write in rhyme?	Ted's mother used to chant rhymes to Ted and his sister when putting them to sleep.
	Why were many of Dr. Seuss' characters animals?	Ted lived near the zoo and his father worked at the zoo. Ted was fascinated by the animals.
	Why was Dr. Seuss a breakthrough innovator?	There were not many entertaining children's books around before Dr. Seuss began writing his children's books.

View slide show of photographs of Dr. Seuss. The teacher reads aloud Oh The Places He Went and asks: What genre does this book belong to? What types of information is included in a biography? What additional information have we learned about Dr. Seuss that we can add to our KWL chart? The additional information is added to the chart in the "What Have We Learned About Dr. Seuss?" column.

The sequence of the main events in the life of Dr. Seuss may be recorded on a sequence chart.

A sample may look like this:

Development:

Students are assigned to one of six groups and assigned roles. Roles include researchers who locate information on the World Wide Web about the life of Dr. Seuss; readers who read the information aloud to the group that is found on the web sites; recorders who take notes from the information found on the web sites on the chart below; and reporters who share the information found with the class. Each group uses a different web site from the list below.

The following web sites will be used to research information about the life of Dr. Seuss. Teachers may wish to edit the material at each web site to better suit the reading levels of their students.

Each of the following web sites includes biographical information about Dr. Seuss:

1. http://catinthehat.org/history.htm

2. http://infoplease.com/spot/seuss1.html

3. http://seuss.org/seuss/seuss.bio.html

4. http://hatful-of-seuss.com/dr_seuss_biography.htm

5. http://carolhurst.com/authors/drseuss.html

6. http://online-library.org/authors/dr-seuss.html

7.http://seussville.com/seussville/seussentennial/resources1.html

8. http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~rmm9977/Biography.htm

This web site is an interview with Dr. Seuss:

http://teachingk-8.com/archives/html/seuss2.html

Questions	Answers
1. What is Dr. Seuss' real name?	Theodor Geisel
2. Where was Dr. Seuss born?	Springfield, Massachusetts
3. Where did he live?	Springfield, Massachusetts
4. Why did he begin writing children's literature?	There weren't many entertaining children's books before Dr. Seuss began writing.
5. What writing style did Dr. Seuss adopt?	rhyme, humorous stories, made up words, repetition of words
6. Why did he adopt silly poetry as his style of writing?	He liked to make up words and rhymed them to create characters and plots that were entertaining for children.
7. What are some of the books that Dr. Seuss wrote?	And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, Horton Hears A Hoo, The Cat In The Hat, The Cat In The Hat Returns, Green Eggs and Ham, Oh, the Places You'll Go, Fox in Socks, How the Grinch Stole Christmas
8. How many books did he write?	44
9. How would you describe the illustrations in the books written by Dr. Seuss?	cartoon-like, animations, animal-like characters, wacky, like looking "through the wrong end of the telescope"
10. What audiences are Dr. Seuss' books written for?	children
11. What type of education did Dr. Seuss receive?	graduated from Dartmouth University and Oxford University
12. What are some jobs that Dr. Seuss held?	Editor of his high school newspaper, Central Recorder; Editor of Dartmouth's humor magazine, Jack O'Lantern, Writer for Dartmouth's newspaper, Daily Dartmouth; sold stories and cartoons to many magazines, worked for an advertising agency writing and illustrating ads
13. What awards did he receive?	two Academy awards, two Emmy awards, a Peabody award and the Pulitzer Prize

Summary:

1. Students share information about the life of Dr. Seuss. Students answer the Scavenger hunt questions found at http://teachers.net/lessons/posts/470.html

Each student writes at least five complete sentences telling about what he or she thought were the most interesting things learned about Dr. Seuss.

2. Students do the cloze activity at Enchanted Learning.

3. Students find the names of books written by Dr. Seuss on a word search.

4. Teacher reads aloud Happy Birthday To You. Students create 100th birthday cards to Dr. Seuss according to the directions at http://seussville.com/seussville/seussentennial/pdf/card.pdf or applications such as Kidpix and The Print Shop may be used to make individual birthday cards. Invitations to a Dr. Seuss 100th birthday party at can be made using the template at http://dltk-cards.com/t/cfishbirthday.html

Evaluation:

Students will be evaluated on their ability to locate, synthesize, write about, and share information about Dr. Seuss' life. A rubric reflecting these skills will be used.

Follow Up:

In Lesson 2, students will read six of Dr. Seuss' books and analyze his writing style.

Related Activities:

1. Students may view the video, In Search Of Dr. Seuss, which is part biography, part performance; both are entertaining and informative. It covers his boyhood years, his advertising history, his wartime documentaries, and the more modern books.

2. Students may look at Who's Who And What's What In The Books of Dr. Seuss. This is an extensive .pdf guide to characters, places, things and what-not through all of Dr. Seuss' published works.

3. Students view memorial sculptures to Dr. Seuss and use clay or papier mâché to sculpt their own memorial sculptures for Dr. Seuss.

4. Teachers may use Oh The Places He Went web site to get ideas for various activities related to Dr. Seuss that span across curriculum areas. A useful bibliography books related to Dr. Seuss is available at this site.