I. Curricular Framework

Concept:

Coping

Essential Question:

How do you cope with bad days?

Bridge:

Good Days/Bad Days

Content:

"Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" by Judith Viorst

Outcomes:

II. Standards Aligned

III. Instruction and Assessment

1. Connect: Connecting to the Concept Experientially

Objective: To have the children begin to examine the ways people cope with bad days, the things they do to feel better.

Activity: Have the children tell their small groups some of the things they do to cope when they are feeling bad. Have them discuss things adults do when they are feeling bad. Create a class list.

Assessment: The relevance of the list they create

2. Attend: Attending to the Connection

Objective: To have the children examine the different ways living things cope.

Activity: Have the children listen to the following three scenarios:
1. A picnic is planned by your family, but it is raining buckets. You all decide to spread blankets on the screened in porch, play koosh ball, cook hot dogs on the barbeque, play a guessing game and award prizes.
2. A wood chuck is burrowing a new tunnel. He comes up under a big rock, he pushes and pushes, he cannot move it. He turns around and builds a new tunnel and goes around the rock
3. Climbing roses are growing along a fence. They hit the side of a brick wall and runs along the walk. The roses climb up and over the wall to the other side and keep going.
Ask what is happening in all three examples. Discuss

Assessment: Do the children see the coping mechanisms in each of the stories? Do they get the concept, that organisms learn to cope?

Assessment, Phase One, Level of Engagement, Fascination:

3. Image: Creating a Mental Picture

Objective: To visualize the contrast between a good day and a bad day.

Activity: Have the children fold a piece of large drawing paper in half. Have them draw a representation of themselves on a good day on one half of the
Paper, and themselves on a bad day on the other half. Have them share their pictures with a partner or a small group.

Assessment: The quality of the drawing: details, relevance, impact on viewers

Assessment, Phase Two, Seeing the Big Picture:

4. Inform: Receiving Facts & Knowledge

Objective: To understand and enjoy the book.

Activity: Read the story Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, and ask the children about the color the artist used to illustrate the book.

Assessment: Attentiveness and understanding on the part of the children

Assessment, Phase Three, Success with Acquiring Knowledge:

5. Practice: Developing Skills

Objective: To elicit from the children the details of the story, how Alexander tried to cope.

Activity: Move the children into groups. Have them find examples in the story of Alexander trying to cope.

Assessment: Accuracy of the answers.

Assessment, Phase Four, Success with Acquiring Skills:

6. Extend: Extending Learning to the Outside World

Objective: To have the children explore how we change bad days into good days.

Activity: In groups, have the children rewrite the story with a new ending. Remind them of the colors the illustrator used to depict the gloom of the bad day and ask them to add color to their endings when they illustrate them.
Assessment: The originality of the new endings and the fun the children have doing the assignment.

7. Refine: Refining the Extension

Objective: To have the children create a class list of coping strategies.

Activity: Have the children write three ways they could have changed their terrible day, (the one they illustrated in Quadrant Two, Right Mode), into a not so bad day. Share these with a partner or in their small group.

Assessment: Originality and workability of their choices.

8. Perform: Creative Manifestation of Material Learned

Objective: To come to closure on how we need to learn to cope.

Activity: Have the children make coping badges and figure out how they want to award them to each other.

Assessment: The design of the badges and how they symbolize coping and the meaning of the award procedure.

Assessment, Phase Five,Performance, Creative Use of Material Learned: