Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?

Title: Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?

Author: Bill Martin Jr. was born in 1916. One of the most famous books that he wrote was Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See. Bill was a writer for 30 years. During his life he wrote over 300 children's books. In 2004 Bill passed away. 

Genre: Picture Book/Fiction 

Grades: K-2

Subject Area: ELA

Summary: This book follows a class when they go to the zoo on a class trip. Students talk about what type of animals sounds they hear well at the zoo. Students learn how to make animal sound throughout the story. It is a great way to learn about animals and the sounds they make. 

Pre Reading Activity: Create a graph that documents the different types of sounds children hear both in and out of the classroom over the course of a week. Create categories for each column, such as transportation, human sounds, machines, animals, and weather. Invite children to list the types of sounds they hear. Compare the different categories. Which column on the graph had the most sounds? Which had the least? (http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3746658)

Post Reading Activity: Have students make a puppet of their favorite animal in the book. Put the kids in order of the animals in the story and act out the story and noise there animals make. Students will say Polar Bear, Polar Bear, what do you see? Polar Bear puppets will say I hear a lion roaring in my eye...this will continue for the whole story.