Using “Brown Bear Brown Bear” in EFL class

Brown Bear Brown Bear is a classic picture book loved by generations of native and non-native speaking children and beautifully illustrated by Eric Carle. The ideas below should also work for other books, or at least help you come up with your own ideas on how you could use them.

Introducing the language

Animals

- Reveal just the eyes of an animal and students identify the animal from it (e.g. with double sided flashcards with eyes on one side and animal on the other, or with something that hides all but that part of the flashcard)

- With flashcards of animals, give hints on which one is coming next with things like its colour, size, other adjectives to describe it and its body parts, where it lives, and what it can and can’t do. Reveal the card when the students have guessed or given up

Colours

- Ask students to guess what colour the next animal flashcard is or guess the next animal from its colour

- Brainstorm animals or things in the classroom for each colour

- Ask them to run and touch things or flashcards in the class that are the colour you call out

For more ideas on using flashcards:

http://edition.tefl.net/ideas/younglearners/flashcard-activities-pre-school-english-class/

Ways of reading the book

- Ask students to guess which animal is coming up next in the book from its colour (plus maybe other clues) or guess which colour from the animal. You might need to cover at least some of the text in the book to stop them just reading the answer

- Give ridiculous suggestions for what is coming up next, e.g. a pink frog, and get them to reject silly ideas by saying no, shaking their heads etc.

- As each animal is revealed, ask them if that colour is normal or what colours that animal is in nature

- If they already know the book really well, skip pages and see if they spot that you have done so

Extensions

Colouring and crafts

- Picture dictation- The teacher gives out a worksheet with animals, then tells the students how to colour them in using a version of the chant in the book. For more fun and involvement, ask students to put up their hands to choose what animal and colour they want everyone to do next.

- Make telescopes from tubes of paper and identify what they can see

- Make headdresses with animal ears on them with different students colouring their ears different colours, then do the chant from the book in a circle as in Speaking Extension Activities below.

- Make a book from individual drawings or different coloured in sheets from different students, e.g. with the same animals but different colours, with different animals, or with one of the topics in Using The Same Chant For Other Topics below

Flashcard extension activities

- Lay flashcards of some animals on the floor with some face up and some turned face down. Ask “Can you see a black snake?” and students answer “Yes (I can)” or “No (I can’t)” depending on whether than can see it at that point or not. “No” could be because it is face down or because you have incorrectly described one of the cards

- Lay out a line of flashcards that aren’t in the book and ask students to remember which one is where as you turn them over so that they are face down. Then do the same chant as the book and see if they can remember the next one each time. You can add more fun and challenge by mixing up the cards a little after you turn them face down.

Speaking extension activities

- While holding an animal flashcard of their choice or wearing the animal ear headdresses described above, students sit in a circle and take turns choosing which person will go next. The whole class then chant “(colour and type of their animal said twice) What do you see?” and they (or the teacher or the whole class is they need help) say “I see a (the animal and colour of the person who chose them) looking at me” Continue until the whole class is done, then you can discard the flashcards or headdresses and do the same thing with students’ real names.

TPR extensions

- After finishing the book, go through the chant again pointing at colours and doing an action for each animal. Other actions you can add include “what” (shoulders shrugged and palms up), “see” and “looking” (fingers drawing line from eyes), and “me” (pointing at chest). To make sure that colours are included (unlike the “Brown Bear Brown Bear song with actions” in the link below), give them a placard with all the colours on to hang around their neck or put large colour flashcards around the room to point at.

Topical extensions

Bears topic

-  Do another story connected to bears, e.g. We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, or Goldilocks and the Three Bears

- Do a song connected to bears, e.g. Teddy Bear’s Picnic, or the Teddy Bear Teddy Bear (turn around, touch the ground etc) song

- Do a bear finger play, e.g. the one described here: http://www.kinderthemes.com/BEARS.html

Normal and strange topic

- Ask the students to identify which colours of animals are normal (green frog etc) and strange (blue horse etc), then do the same with other things linked to other recent lesson topics e.g. classroom vocabulary (“The whiteboard is pink”), prepositions (“The teacher is under the desk”) etc.

- Ask them what things they can do in class are good and bad in the same way to go through class rules

Animals topic

- Students collect pictures of animals and cut out the eyes (or put a blank piece of paper on top with a slot for the eyes) to test each other with

- Students collect pictures or lists of animals which are unusual colours like blue or purple, or even blue and purple combined

Using the same chant for other topics

Actions

- Do the same chant with “pointing at me”, “shooting at me”, “nodding at me”, “blowing me”, “kicking at me”, “sniffing me”, “clapping me” etc, maybe leading onto good and bad classroom behaviour as suggested above

Alphabet

- “Letter A, letter A what do you see? I see letter B looking at me”

- “Apple, apple, what do you see? I see a banana looking at me” etc

- Brainstorming words starting with the same letter round the class with the same chant

Learning names

- Pick a photo or self portrait out of a bag, then the whole class identifies who it is with “I see (student’s name) looking at me” or “We see (student’s name) looking at us”. The original question could be “Children, children, who do you see?” or “(name of last person picked out of bag said twice), who do you see?”

- They test each other on the memory of what comes next in the book with “James, James, what did you see?”

- See “Speaking extension activities” above

Family members

- Do mimes for each family member, e.g. fighting for little brother and stroking a beard for grandfather. You can add more fun by using silly voices for each family member.

Festivals

- Halloween things like pumpkin, ghost, witch, etc- all with colours and all with eyes to make “What do you see?” make sense. The same thing can be done with reindeer, pixie etc for Xmas.

Sample lesson plans for two one hour classes with a new group of students

Lesson 1

Materials

• A soft ball
• Name badges with students’ names on
• A recording of an action song, e.g. We Like to Walk from FAB Red (Saxoncourt publishing)
• CD player
• Colour vocabulary flashcards
• Animal vocabulary flashcards (must be in colour)
• Made up “Colour necklaces” (an A4 print out with a selection of colours with string attached so students can put it around their necks) or colour flashcards stuck around the room
• If possible, a recording of the Brown Bear Brown Bear song
• Animal colouring worksheets
• Colouring pencils or crayons, enough so that most students can be colouring with the same colour at the same time, e.g. one box of crayons each
• Maybe a recording of the Teddy Bear Teddy Bear song (although doing it a cappella lets you control the tempo and change the words, e.g. to miss out “Say your prayers”)
• Maybe a teddy bear or bear puppet

Preparation

• Put the chairs into a circle at the front of the classroom but with enough space to walk around the outside and arrange the tables at the back of the classroom so all the chairs can be put around them later
• Prepare one Colour Necklace for each student or stick colour flashcards around the room
• Put Post Its over the text of the book in case some of the students can read so that they have to guess what is coming up rather than reading it
• Arrange animal flashcards so that the first ones are easy to guess due to doing obvious actions, being familiar colours, or having the same name in the students’ language

Stages

1. Ask the students their names as they come in and give them the name badges

2. Throw or roll the ball from person to person asking “What’s your name?”, saying “Throw” and “Catch” each time

3. After you put the ball away, students chant and mime “throw”, “catch”, “throw and catch”, “throw, stand up, catch, sit down”, then other actions

4. Run through the actions of the action song, then do the song with actions

5. Students guess the animals on the first few flashcards from the actions you describe, e.g. “It can jump and swim” for a frog. Do an action for each animal as they guess them, e.g. “Jump like a frog”

Possible animal actions:

Bear- Scratching, hugging or walking along with heavy steps while trying to bear hug someone

Bird- Flying by flapping arms

Duck- Waddle and flap wings (hands on hips) or use a hand as a beak

Horse- Sitting on a horse holding the reins while it trots and jumps

Frog- Getting right down to the floor and jumping

Cat- Cleaning whiskers

Dog- Baring fangs and barking at something

Fish- Two hands with palms against each other swimming or hand on head as a fin and cheeks blown up

6. Ask for the colour of each animal as you show it, then get them to point at other things in the classroom which is the same colour

7. Move onto guessing animals when you tell them the colour

8. Introduce colours with colour flashcards, then drill and maybe play some flashcard games

9. Give out the “colour necklaces” and test them on what colour the animals on the flashcards were, asking them to touch and say the right colour each time. Alternatively, do the same by pointing at colour flashcards around the room

10. Read the book, asking them to guess what colour the animals are or which animal is coming up next from the colour

11. Run through the text of the book again, maybe as a chant or song, this time asking them to point at the colours and do an action for each animal, plus gestures for “what” “you” “see” “I” “see” “looking” and “me”

the book goes:

- Brown bear

- Red bird

- Yellow duck

- Blue horse

- Green frog

- Purple cat

- White dog

- Black sheep

- Goldfish

- Teacher

- Children

12. Ask for the Colour Necklaces back with “(Can I have the) colour necklace, please?”

13. Get them to ask for one animal flashcard each with “(Can I have) lion, please?”, then ask them to sit in a circle holding their flashcards against their chest so everyone can see them

14. Run through the same dialogue as the book going from person to person in the class, with the whole class asking “(colour and name of the animal of that the person who is chosen) what do you see?” and them replying (maybe with help from the class and/ or the teacher) “I see (colour and name of the animal of the person who chose them) looking at me”

15. Ask for the animals back with “(Can I have) monkey, please?”

16. Get them to ask for the colouring worksheets with “(Can I have a) worksheet, please?” and ask them to go to the table one at a time as they get their worksheets

17. When they are all sitting, get them to ask for crayons

18. Do the colouring worksheet, chanting as in the book and asking one student to nominate the next colour and animal with “Hands up!”

19. Finish with the Teddy Bear Teddy Bear song, maybe showing the actions with a teddy bear or bear puppet. Possible lyrics:

Teddy bear, teddy bear turn around
Teddy bear, teddy bear, touch the ground
Teddy bear, teddy bear, pat your head
Teddy bear, teddy bear, go to bed
Teddy bear, teddy bear, wake up now
Teddy bear, teddy bear, take your bow
(Teddy bear, teddy bear, reach up high
Teddy bear, teddy bear, wave good bye)

Lesson 2

Materials

• An action song on CD
• CD player
• A soft ball
• Colour flashcards
• Blu Tack or Sellotape to stick the flashcards up
• Animal flashcards in colour, including animals not in the book
• If possible, a colour song on CD, e.g. Red Yellow Blue from FAB Red (Saxoncourt Publishing)
• Flashcard detail revealer- A piece of A3 card with a hole cut from it that is big enough to show just one body part, e.g. the eyes, of the flashcards you are using. Alternatively, cut up copies of the flashcards you are going to use and maybe stick them to the other sides of the flashcards.
• One copy of a worksheet for making animal ear headdresses per student, plus extra copies in case they spoil theirs and want to start again
• Strips of paper to make the headbands for the headdresses from
• Staples or sellotape for making the headdresses
• Sellotape for patching up bad cutting
• One or two packets of colouring pencils or crayons
• Scissors for all students and teacher
• One cut up version of the worksheets for making animal ear headdresses
• Maybe a teddy bear puppet
• Maybe a CD of a final action song, preferably one which involves waving goodbye

Preparation

• Stick the flashcards around the room with sellotape or Blu Tack. Make sure they are touchable or out of touch depending on what games you are going to play, discipline problems in the class etc.
• Prepare a Flashcard Detail Revealer or details of the animal flashcards by cutting them up
• One set of cut up ears from the worksheets
• Cut up strips of paper for the headdress headbands, one per student plus two for demonstrating with

Stages

1. Do an action song, e.g. the same one as in Lesson 1
2. Ask them to sit in a circle and do “What’s your name?” with the beachball
3. Mime “throw” and “catch”, then do the same with “point” and “touch”, plus maybe other classroom actions you will need later in the class like “cut” and “colour”
4. Do a colour song with students pointing at or touching coloured objects and colour flashcards around the class
5. Filler- Play Slap or Run and Touch with colour flashcards
6. Read the book, maybe skipping pages to keep them on their toes, test their memory and produce some nice noisy protests
7. Filler- Do the same thing as the book with a row o