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Frog and Toad: A Lost Button Lesson Plan

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Lesson Plan #:AELP-MPS019
Author: Jonna Epps
School or Affiliation: Moss-Washoe County School District, Reno, Nevada (ICE)
Endorsed by: These lesson plans are the result of the work of the teachers who have attended the Columbia Education Center’s Summer Workshop. CEC is a consortium of teachers from 14 western states dedicated to improving the quality of education in the rural, western, United States, and particularly the quality of math and science Education. CEC uses Big Sky Telegraph as the hub of their telecommunications network that allows the participating teachers to stay in contact with their trainers and peers that they have met at the Workshops. Date: May 1994

Grade Level(s): 2

Subject(s):

  • Mathematics/Process Skills
  • Language Arts/Literature/Children’s Literature

Overview: Adapted from a unit written by Marcella Embry, Washoe County School District, Reno, Nevada: Adventures with Frog and Toad. Based on Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad are Friends . These activities have been designed around the story, A Lost Button.

Purpose: The stories in the book, Frog and Toad are Friends by Arnold Lobel and these activities allow for creative thinking and writing, reading and analysis of characters, affective education, mathematics beyond computation, inventing, geography, biological science and development of research skills.

Objective(s):

  • Students will learn the following vocabulary: set, attribute, and Venn diagram.
  • Students will learn to describe character attributes.

    • Materials:

    • buttons for sorting
    • Venn diagram sheets (Laura Candler has some graphic organizer resources )
    • copy of Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad Are Friends

    Activities:

  • Begin reading aloud the story of, A Lost Button. Stop in the middle of page 30, and give each group of students a bag of buttons. Tell them they are to help Toad look for his lost button. It might be in their bag!
  • Continue the story skipping page 30. Read page 30 after page 36. Did anyone have Toad’s button? Discuss Toad’s character after the story is finished. What kind of person (animal) is Toad? Is he a good friend? What about Frog? etc.
  • Introduce the students to the terms set and attribute. Have students sort their buttons into different sets based on different attributes of the buttons (i.e., number of holes, shape, size, color).
  • Play What’s My Attribute? Have a group of students with a common attribute (such as hair or shirt color) stand in the front of the room. The other students try to determine the attribute the group has in common. The student with the correct answer selects the next group of students and play continues. This will now be a fun and fast thinking game.
  • Introduce the students to Venn diagrams. Use their buttons for the first several Venn diagrams you do (so they may quickly and concretely create the diagram). Now that the students understand sets, attributes, and Venn diagrams, they may use them with other problem solving.

    • Assessment: Informally observe students as they sort their buttons and complete their Venn diagrams.

    • Table of Contents