Days With Frog And Toad Analysis
ENGL 3300-Children’s Literature
Essay #1
February 27, 2014
Evaluation of Days With Frog and Toad
Book and Illustrations by Arnold Lobel
With all of the standards teacher have to follow and meet in their day to day decisions in guiding of our children, how can they choose a text to teach in the classroom? If you had this choice to make, how would you decide? With so many books being published every day how do we as educators decide which ones are a good fit in our lessons? In my evaluation of Days With Frog and Toad my intentions are to provide solid reasoning and proof to why this illustrated book would be a good choice for Early Childhood classrooms between the first and second grades. I will do so through explaining the book …show more content…
and who it is intended for, as well as providing important criteria and in depth descriptions of the book and ways it can be used in these classrooms to help aid in more than just engaging young readers. Choosing texts for our classrooms is a tricky task and has many underlying concerns for us as educators, and since there are so many options, let us take a look at Days With Frog and Toad and decide if it would fit in your classroom.
Days With Frog and Toad shows the day to day life of two best friends and how they do everything together; they fly kites, tell ghost stories, and enjoy one another’s company. Then one day when Toad goes to Frogs house he finds a note simply stating he wanted to spend the day alone. Toad is sure something is wrong and sets off to fix it only to find that Frog isn’t upset or sad he just wanted to take time to reflect upon all the wonderful things he had in his life. Days With Frog and Toad is in a series of books titled I Can Read and is also the first of a sub series of stories about Frog and his worrisome friend Toad. The I Can Read series ranks books from My First, which implies shared reading to a #4, which is advanced reader. Days With Frog and Toad is appropriately rated as a #2 which is reading with help since it has complex words which could be worked through with help from an adult. It also has a Lexile score of 320L which indicates early second grade. The sentences are short and easily read with some adult instruction but the dialog may be hard for a newer reader during independent reading. Picture books should be able to generate some type of learning whether it is as simple as phonics or more complex aspects such as carrying over learning into another topic such as science or racial Diversity. I don’t think it would be much of a stretch to reason that the majority of teachers would agree that books should be engaging and interesting but with as many tasks as teachers have on the agenda we need to be able to incorporate reading in others areas and this plays a huge part in how and what we choose to bring into our classrooms.
In considering this book for our first and second grade classrooms we need to look at it from both views as adult educators and attempt to view it through a student’s eyes as well. This book was written specifically for this age group and is about a topic most children between the ages of 6 to 7 are likely to encounter. Children often fear being left alone or left out and this text helps to confront those fears and explain what may be happening. Through reading it with an adult it gives us the chance to eliminate some of the questions they may have about these feelings. Days With Frog and Toad would be a great tool to help teach about personal differences, likes/dislikes, and friendship in general, not to mention the many ways in could be incorporated into the class room for many other events and subjects. The book is aligned with Common Core Standards for first and second grades, and you can include activities from many other subjects outside of reading including science and English. This book meets and can be used in lessons to meet more than seven common core standards, these standards include CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.2.5 Demonstrate understanding of word relationships and nuances in word meanings, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.2.5a Identify real life connections between words and their use, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.2.1 Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding, also CCSS.ELA.Literacy.RL.2.3 Describe how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges (Corestandards.org). The illustrations Lobel uses throughout the book are simple in style which makes them very easy for first and second graders to look at and interpret. He develops the characters through the illustrations, by using different tones of green to show the differences in Frog and Toad. Frog is a much brighter green and is slightly heavier and taller, and Toad is almost brown, and much shorter. Lobel also uses facial expressions for these two characters, Frog almost always has a pleasant look on his face whereas Toad shows more worry in some scenes. The illustrations follow the text with almost clockwork precision, it shows each activity they do each day not leaving too much to the imagination and we can look at these illustrations to help set the mood for example on pages 15 and 16 when they are trying to fly their kite and Toad is upset and ready to give up then Frog calms him down and they both celebrate when they get it up into the air. Lobel tends to keep the attention on the whole frame and in some of the illustrations; for example on page17 where Frog and Toad are sitting atop a hill smiling and enjoying the kite flying high Lobel draws from the perspective of an outside person watching. This perspective shows that anyone watching these characters knows automatically how close they are. His pictures lean more toward organic; Frog and Toad playing in fields or at the river. He doesn’t draw anything mechanical or abstract, it’s all from their world and natural to them and us. This gives us less to interpret and we can focus on Frog and Toads relationship yet again.
While evaluating Days With Frog and Toad I weighed criteria that seemed important and that I believe future educators feel to be most important. While deciding which of my criteria were most relevant and important I came across this statement:
A highly respected critic of children’s literature, suggested that well-written and well-conceived picture books and their illustrations should also build an appreciation of beauty and aesthetics, open up interpretation and imagination, and encourage the child to actively participate in the story. (Sutherland, 2004)
This statement ties in with my first criteria for the text being used to be appealing and engaging for the grade level intended.
Days With Frog and Toad is a text in which early readers would relate to on many levels. Students in first and second grade are more likely to read a story where they can make predictions in a story and when they can identify with the characters portrayed, and the characters while not human are very easy for young children to identify with. They can put themselves in each situation and predict the outcome while choosing how they themselves would feel and act in the situations. Early readers also like to envision themselves as the characters and it would be easy for them to pretend as if they were Frog or Toad. The students can also look at the way Frog and Toad develop themselves and their friendship and apply it to their own lives to identify good and bad relationships and ways to strengthen friendships, how they value themselves and one another to help them communicate with one another by respecting others feelings. We can prompt discussion with questions like, what makes a good friend? Or how can we show someone we are their friend? Incorporating the text into a longer time frame would allow us to introduce other texts that cover similar material. Teachers could incorporate Fox Makes Friends, by Adam Relf (2005). Relf’s illustrated book tells the story of a fox that is determined to make friends and indeed does. In Fox Makes Friends Relf uses animals in his story as does Lobel although Relf’s artistry is abundantly more lively and vibrant. Fox Makes Friends would be a perfect starter book for a section of material leading up to Days With Frog and
Toad.
The second criteria in evaluating the text is for the language to be age appropriate but on a level high enough to entice more advanced readers and warrant some learning exercises in more than one subject. While the majority of the text is easily understood there are some wonderful opportunities for vocabulary expansion, some words that could be introduced are: shiver, sparrow, wail, and envelope. Teachers could also have the students identify root words, or find singular/plural words in the text, or construct worksheets to guide the students. There are also some opportunities for exercises in science. Teachers can incorporate this story into a unit to study frogs and toads, how are they different or how are they alike? What do they eat?
The third and final criteria are that the illustrated text chosen has pictures that help tell the story. They can do this in one or more ways, they can simply reinforce the words written, they can add to the story, or they can help set a mood not conveyed in the words. Lobel is pretty straightforward with his illustrations in Days with Frog and Toad, he paints a picture of exactly what is happening on each page with few exceptions. Lobel adds some chirping birds to some scenes to depict happiness when they are flying their kite, another thing worth noting is the illustrations tell us how important these two characters are to one another since Lobel doesn’t add other characters into the scenes except in three slides. He adds the mother and father only when Frog is telling his ghost story and he adds Turtle into the scene to help Toad get to Frog in the middle of the river. With over fifty scenes in the book the emphasis is on Frog and Toad just as the title and the text relay. He does convey some mood through his pictures which help add to the story, in some scenes the characters faces show mild emotion such as the happiness on Toads face on page 16, when the kite is flying high in the sky, or suspense on page 23, while they are telling ghost stories. The illustrations are colorful but without the use of extremely bright colors, Lobel uses contrasting greens, grays, and browns in a way that sounds dull but he makes come alive with his backgrounds and his two characters.
When choosing texts for our classrooms we must use information from all areas, we should value our peers input and the opinions of those we teach. When we start to consider every aspect of this task it becomes intimidating. If we can narrow the selections down by using criteria such as I have stated above it makes the task easier to handle. Through my evaluation I believe now more so then when I started that Days With Frog and Toad would be an excellent choice for use in a first or second grade classroom.
Works Cited
Core Standards. Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2014. Web. February 12, 2014.
Days with Frog and Toad Common Core. Teachers pay Teachers. September 25, 2013/January 2, 2014. Web. February 12, 2014.
Frog and Toad: Facts and Fiction. The Literacy Garden. September 29, 2013. Web. February 12, 2014.
Lobel, Arnold. Days with Frog and Toad. Harper Collins, 1979. EBook.
Relf, Adam. Fox Makes Friends. Sterling, 2005. Web.
Sutherland, Zena. Children and Books. United States: Pearson, 2004. Web.
Essay #1
February 27, 2014
Evaluation of Days With Frog and Toad
Book and Illustrations by Arnold Lobel
With all of the standards teacher have to follow and meet in their day to day decisions in guiding of our children, how can they choose a text to teach in the classroom? If you had this choice to make, how would you decide? With so many books being published every day how do we as educators decide which ones are a good fit in our lessons? In my evaluation of Days With Frog and Toad my intentions are to provide solid reasoning and proof to why this illustrated book would be a good choice for Early Childhood classrooms between the first and second grades. I will do so through explaining the book …show more content…
and who it is intended for, as well as providing important criteria and in depth descriptions of the book and ways it can be used in these classrooms to help aid in more than just engaging young readers. Choosing texts for our classrooms is a tricky task and has many underlying concerns for us as educators, and since there are so many options, let us take a look at Days With Frog and Toad and decide if it would fit in your classroom.
Days With Frog and Toad shows the day to day life of two best friends and how they do everything together; they fly kites, tell ghost stories, and enjoy one another’s company. Then one day when Toad goes to Frogs house he finds a note simply stating he wanted to spend the day alone. Toad is sure something is wrong and sets off to fix it only to find that Frog isn’t upset or sad he just wanted to take time to reflect upon all the wonderful things he had in his life. Days With Frog and Toad is in a series of books titled I Can Read and is also the first of a sub series of stories about Frog and his worrisome friend Toad. The I Can Read series ranks books from My First, which implies shared reading to a #4, which is advanced reader. Days With Frog and Toad is appropriately rated as a #2 which is reading with help since it has complex words which could be worked through with help from an adult. It also has a Lexile score of 320L which indicates early second grade. The sentences are short and easily read with some adult instruction but the dialog may be hard for a newer reader during independent reading. Picture books should be able to generate some type of learning whether it is as simple as phonics or more complex aspects such as carrying over learning into another topic such as science or racial Diversity. I don’t think it would be much of a stretch to reason that the majority of teachers would agree that books should be engaging and interesting but with as many tasks as teachers have on the agenda we need to be able to incorporate reading in others areas and this plays a huge part in how and what we choose to bring into our classrooms.
In considering this book for our first and second grade classrooms we need to look at it from both views as adult educators and attempt to view it through a student’s eyes as well. This book was written specifically for this age group and is about a topic most children between the ages of 6 to 7 are likely to encounter. Children often fear being left alone or left out and this text helps to confront those fears and explain what may be happening. Through reading it with an adult it gives us the chance to eliminate some of the questions they may have about these feelings. Days With Frog and Toad would be a great tool to help teach about personal differences, likes/dislikes, and friendship in general, not to mention the many ways in could be incorporated into the class room for many other events and subjects. The book is aligned with Common Core Standards for first and second grades, and you can include activities from many other subjects outside of reading including science and English. This book meets and can be used in lessons to meet more than seven common core standards, these standards include CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.2.5 Demonstrate understanding of word relationships and nuances in word meanings, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.2.5a Identify real life connections between words and their use, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.2.1 Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding, also CCSS.ELA.Literacy.RL.2.3 Describe how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges (Corestandards.org). The illustrations Lobel uses throughout the book are simple in style which makes them very easy for first and second graders to look at and interpret. He develops the characters through the illustrations, by using different tones of green to show the differences in Frog and Toad. Frog is a much brighter green and is slightly heavier and taller, and Toad is almost brown, and much shorter. Lobel also uses facial expressions for these two characters, Frog almost always has a pleasant look on his face whereas Toad shows more worry in some scenes. The illustrations follow the text with almost clockwork precision, it shows each activity they do each day not leaving too much to the imagination and we can look at these illustrations to help set the mood for example on pages 15 and 16 when they are trying to fly their kite and Toad is upset and ready to give up then Frog calms him down and they both celebrate when they get it up into the air. Lobel tends to keep the attention on the whole frame and in some of the illustrations; for example on page17 where Frog and Toad are sitting atop a hill smiling and enjoying the kite flying high Lobel draws from the perspective of an outside person watching. This perspective shows that anyone watching these characters knows automatically how close they are. His pictures lean more toward organic; Frog and Toad playing in fields or at the river. He doesn’t draw anything mechanical or abstract, it’s all from their world and natural to them and us. This gives us less to interpret and we can focus on Frog and Toads relationship yet again.
While evaluating Days With Frog and Toad I weighed criteria that seemed important and that I believe future educators feel to be most important. While deciding which of my criteria were most relevant and important I came across this statement:
A highly respected critic of children’s literature, suggested that well-written and well-conceived picture books and their illustrations should also build an appreciation of beauty and aesthetics, open up interpretation and imagination, and encourage the child to actively participate in the story. (Sutherland, 2004)
This statement ties in with my first criteria for the text being used to be appealing and engaging for the grade level intended.
Days With Frog and Toad is a text in which early readers would relate to on many levels. Students in first and second grade are more likely to read a story where they can make predictions in a story and when they can identify with the characters portrayed, and the characters while not human are very easy for young children to identify with. They can put themselves in each situation and predict the outcome while choosing how they themselves would feel and act in the situations. Early readers also like to envision themselves as the characters and it would be easy for them to pretend as if they were Frog or Toad. The students can also look at the way Frog and Toad develop themselves and their friendship and apply it to their own lives to identify good and bad relationships and ways to strengthen friendships, how they value themselves and one another to help them communicate with one another by respecting others feelings. We can prompt discussion with questions like, what makes a good friend? Or how can we show someone we are their friend? Incorporating the text into a longer time frame would allow us to introduce other texts that cover similar material. Teachers could incorporate Fox Makes Friends, by Adam Relf (2005). Relf’s illustrated book tells the story of a fox that is determined to make friends and indeed does. In Fox Makes Friends Relf uses animals in his story as does Lobel although Relf’s artistry is abundantly more lively and vibrant. Fox Makes Friends would be a perfect starter book for a section of material leading up to Days With Frog and
Toad.
The second criteria in evaluating the text is for the language to be age appropriate but on a level high enough to entice more advanced readers and warrant some learning exercises in more than one subject. While the majority of the text is easily understood there are some wonderful opportunities for vocabulary expansion, some words that could be introduced are: shiver, sparrow, wail, and envelope. Teachers could also have the students identify root words, or find singular/plural words in the text, or construct worksheets to guide the students. There are also some opportunities for exercises in science. Teachers can incorporate this story into a unit to study frogs and toads, how are they different or how are they alike? What do they eat?
The third and final criteria are that the illustrated text chosen has pictures that help tell the story. They can do this in one or more ways, they can simply reinforce the words written, they can add to the story, or they can help set a mood not conveyed in the words. Lobel is pretty straightforward with his illustrations in Days with Frog and Toad, he paints a picture of exactly what is happening on each page with few exceptions. Lobel adds some chirping birds to some scenes to depict happiness when they are flying their kite, another thing worth noting is the illustrations tell us how important these two characters are to one another since Lobel doesn’t add other characters into the scenes except in three slides. He adds the mother and father only when Frog is telling his ghost story and he adds Turtle into the scene to help Toad get to Frog in the middle of the river. With over fifty scenes in the book the emphasis is on Frog and Toad just as the title and the text relay. He does convey some mood through his pictures which help add to the story, in some scenes the characters faces show mild emotion such as the happiness on Toads face on page 16, when the kite is flying high in the sky, or suspense on page 23, while they are telling ghost stories. The illustrations are colorful but without the use of extremely bright colors, Lobel uses contrasting greens, grays, and browns in a way that sounds dull but he makes come alive with his backgrounds and his two characters.
When choosing texts for our classrooms we must use information from all areas, we should value our peers input and the opinions of those we teach. When we start to consider every aspect of this task it becomes intimidating. If we can narrow the selections down by using criteria such as I have stated above it makes the task easier to handle. Through my evaluation I believe now more so then when I started that Days With Frog and Toad would be an excellent choice for use in a first or second grade classroom.
Works Cited
Core Standards. Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2014. Web. February 12, 2014.
Days with Frog and Toad Common Core. Teachers pay Teachers. September 25, 2013/January 2, 2014. Web. February 12, 2014.
Frog and Toad: Facts and Fiction. The Literacy Garden. September 29, 2013. Web. February 12, 2014.
Lobel, Arnold. Days with Frog and Toad. Harper Collins, 1979. EBook.
Relf, Adam. Fox Makes Friends. Sterling, 2005. Web.
Sutherland, Zena. Children and Books. United States: Pearson, 2004. Web.