Each year my school participates in Read Across America, a celebration of Dr. Seuss’ Birthday. When I first started teaching here, the school librarian approached me about doing some activity with the students in art for Read Across America. She brought me a number of books, and the one that caught my eye was On Beyond Zebra!
I don’t do this lesson with all of my classes, just the ones that fall close to March 2 AND it makes sense to do it. I don’t like to interrupt my other units too much.
Last year I had the students spend 2 classes on this. On the second class they finished up and shared their work via AudioBoom. This year I will be doing this activity with 4 classes, 2 the Friday before RAA and 2 the day of, and it is just a one day activity. Things have been so choppy with all of the snow days, so we’re just taking 1 class for these.
This project is totally flexible. I’m thinking about reaching out to classroom teachers for next year and see if they want to collaborate and start this in art and use it as a writing activity back in the classroom.
That way everyone could start it the week before RAA, and in their classroom they would work on it the day of RAA.
I hope you all had a great time if you were able to celebrate Dr. Seuss’ Birthday!
Keep Calm & Teach Art 