Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Elementary Lesson Plan
Teach Kindergarten Students to Make Predictions and Use ABC Order
Jun 17, 2009
The book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault [Simon & Schuster, 1989] can be used by Kindergarten teachers at the beginning of the school year to review the letters of the alphabet, teach students to make predictions, and to help kids understand ABC order.
Introduce Chicka Chicka Boom Boom to Kindergarten Kids
The Kindergarten teacher begins the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom ABC order lesson by showing the cover of the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and pointing out the title, authors, and illustrator.
The teacher leads the class in a picture walk through the story by showing the students the book’s illustrations and asking them questions about the pictures they see. The questions help the students infer what the story might be about based on the illustrator’s clues.The students use the information from the picture walk to predict what the story will be about.
Sample picture walk questions the teacher can ask Kindergarten students are:
- Have you seen a tree like this before?
- What are the letters doing in the pictures?
- What might this book be about?
- Why do you think that?
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Kindergarten Prediction Lesson
After the kindergarten students have completed the picture walk of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom the teacher explains, "when you tell what you think is going to happen in a story you are making a prediction". The class discusses their thoughts and generates a class prediction about Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.
The teacher then reads the story aloud to the class stopping to ask the students questions. Questioning students while reading aids in text comprehension. The Kindergarten teacher asks the students to questions to help with understanding.
- Do you think all the letters will climb the tree?
- Will they all fit?
- Why or why not?
- Did you ever climb a tree?
- What happened?
- Why did all the letters fall out of the coconut tree?
- Who came to help the letters?
- Have you ever fallen and gotten hurt? Who helped you?
The teacher points out the lines “Chicka chicka boom boom. Will there be enough room?” She tells the class that she is going to read them the story again and this time the students will read the chicka chicka lines with her. The students follow along with their own copies of the story if available.
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom ABC Order Lesson
The teacher sings the ABC song with the Kindergarten kids. She tells the students that each letter has a certain place in the song and that order the letters are sung in is called ABC order or alphabetical order.
The Kindergarten teacher shows the kids that the letters in the book went up the tree in alphabetical order. She tells the students that putting letters and words into ABC order helps people organize words. The teacher points to the page in Chicka Chicka Boom Boom where the letters fall out of the tree. She explains that when the letters fell out of the tree and got mixed up they were not in ABC order anymore.
The teacher passes out sand buckets filled with each letter of the alphabet to pairs or small groups of students. She tells the Kindergarten students that these are like the letters that fell off the coconut tree and that they need to put them back into alphabetical order.
The students use the ABC song, the book, and the classroom alphabet to put the letters into ABC order.
Kindergarten students can use the illustrations in Chicka Chicka Boom Boom to learn how to make predictions about a story based on a picture walk. Then after reading the story the students learn how to put the letters into ABC order.
For more ideas on how to have fun with letters Kindergarten teachers can read: Alphabet Activities and Games and Write ABC, Haiku, Quatrain and Concrete Poems.
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