Activities before Reading Aloud “I Am Not a Chair!”<\/strong><\/h3>\nBefore the children came to class, I stuck a huge paper giraffe with a big heart on the floor and covered it with cloth. The heart was the only part left uncovered. When children came to class, what they encountered was a giant heart on the floor.<\/p>\n
I asked the first question: \u201cwhat is this? How huge is it!\u201d. \u201cIt\u2019s a flower\u201d, Mehdi guessed. \u201cIt\u2019s a heart\u201d, Narges answered. \u201cWhose heart is it?\u201d, I asked. Children didn\u2019t know. \u201cI\u2019ve heard that big hearts are kind ones. Let\u2019s ask this heart who it belongs to.\u201d, I said. Then I listened to its heartbeat with a toy stethoscope. \u201cThe heart is awake.\u201d, I told children. I asked for the heart\u2019s permission so that children could ask any questions they had from it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere do you live?\u201d, Narges asked. \u201cAfrica\u201d, the heart answered (I was hearing the heart\u2019s response through the stethoscope and answered children\u2019s questions). \u201cWhose heart are you\u201d one of the children asked. \u201cI can\u2019t tell you. You have to find that out yourselves,\u201d Said the heart. \u201cDo you live in the jungle?\u201d \u201cAre you giant? Are you a monster?\u201d \u201cAre you a cat?\u201d, children kept asking and asking until\u2026 \u201cAre you a giraffe?\u201d, Fatemeh finally guessed. \u201cYes, yes! That\u2019s right\u201d I answered enthusiastically. \u201cNow tell me whatever you know about giraffes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Learning about Giraffes<\/h4>\n
\u201cGiraffe has a very long neck and eats leaves from trees.\u201d, they said. \u201cWhy does it eat tree leaves? Why doesn\u2019t it eat plants off the ground?\u201d I asked. \u201cLeaves may be dirty or poisonous on the ground. They\u2019ll give giraffes stomachaches.\u201d Taha said.<\/p>\n
Then we talked about how giraffes sleep. Taha believed that they sleep like dogs. So we all became giraffes and slept on the floor like dogs. \u201cThat\u2019s weird! How can a giraffe so tall, sleep like a dog?\u201d I asked. \u201cNo, giraffes sleep on their legs.\u201d Said one of the children and showed us how a giraffe would sleep on its legs. We all did the same\u2026 and tried sleeping many different ways.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow many of you should we put on top of one another to become as tall as a giraffe?\u201d I asked. Children lied on the ground, next to the meter beside the giraffe. We saw that four children are as tall as a female giraffe. \u201cHow many jumps or steps does it take to become as tall as a giraffe?\u201d They all tried and answered.<\/p>\n
In the end, we sang the Giraffe Song together.<\/p>\n
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Activities During Reading Aloud “I Am Not a Chair!”<\/strong><\/h3>\nI showed the book cover to children and asked them to talk about what they saw. Throughout the book, I encouraged them to talk about the illustrations, because they were quite descriptive. Children were cooperative and all of them shared their opinions. They were surprised at how everybody mistook the giraffe for a chair. When we started comparing giraffes and chairs, they were unanimous that they are not similar at all. They started talking about differences between the two. Then why didn\u2019t the other animals understand? Why couldn\u2019t the giraffe tell that he was not a chair? What would you have done if you were the giraffe?<\/p>\n
Activities After Reading Aloud “I Am Not a Chair!”<\/strong><\/h3>\nFor follow-up activities, we played the \u201ccooperative musical chairs\u201d. I brought as many chairs as the children and played some music. Children walked around the chair until the music stopped. Then they had to find a chair to sit in. After each round, I removed one chair, and children had to find a way for everyone to be seated. The less chairs, the louder the sound of their laughter\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“I Am Not a Chair!” is a book about a giraffe that everybody mistakes for a chair. But he is not as self-confident as to tell them he\u2019s not a chair, but a giraffe. At first he endures a smelly skunk and a heavy rhinoceros sitting on him and a snake wrapping around his neck. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":40996,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[378],"tags":[1966,157,217],"class_list":["post-40985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-report","tag-read-with-me-experiences","tag-reading-promotion-in-tehran","tag-reading-aloud"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/readwithme.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/readwithme.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/readwithme.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readwithme.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readwithme.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/readwithme.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readwithme.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/readwithme.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readwithme.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/readwithme.ir\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/p>\nI showed the book cover to children and asked them to talk about what they saw. Throughout the book, I encouraged them to talk about the illustrations, because they were quite descriptive. Children were cooperative and all of them shared their opinions. They were surprised at how everybody mistook the giraffe for a chair. When we started comparing giraffes and chairs, they were unanimous that they are not similar at all. They started talking about differences between the two. Then why didn\u2019t the other animals understand? Why couldn\u2019t the giraffe tell that he was not a chair? What would you have done if you were the giraffe?<\/p>\n