Dogs Don't Wear Sneakers by Laura Numberoff - Teaching Ideas

The author of this book is Laura Numeroff. She is also the author of If You Give A Mouse A Cookie, which is such a wonderfully fun book, one everyone has and loves. When Laura Numeroff wrote this book, she created a book that is just as good, if not better than the Mouse books. It is told in rhyme and is completely silly! It is about all things that aren't true: dogs in sneakers, cats in dresses, moose bowling, and roosters working out, plus many more silly situations. But what makes this book even better is the call to action at the end of the book. She asks the kids to close their eyes and visualize an animal doing or wearing something unusual. The sky is the limit for your students to be completely silly! If you haven't read this book yet to your students, you really should pull it out and have some fun!

Listed below are the skills, strategies and ideas that you can use with this book. Because it is not really a story, there really are not that many skills and strategies. I did however, create a visualization activity for you - FREE! It falls in line with the call to action and gives the kids a place to draw and a paper to write about their silly animal.

Reading level: 1.7

Theme/subject: animals, imagination

Genre: humorous fiction

Suggested Vocabulary/phrases: Siamese cats

Reading skills and strategies:

• Author's point of view – Third person. Be sure to find 3 pieces of evidence to support this.
• Author's purpose – entertain {evidence} the story is written in rhyme. The animals are doing silly things and dogs don’t wear sneakers.
• Classify & categorize – Classify animals – categorize farm animals, wild animals, and domesticated animals.
• Compare & contrast – animals and people
• Main idea & details - {main idea} The main idea of the story is all the things animals don’t do. {details} dogs don’t wear sneakers. Moose don’t go bowling and yaks never ski. 
• Visualize – The book is filled with silly things that animals don’t do or wear. Visualize an animal, what do you see it doing or wearing?

IT'S FREE!!

Happy Reading!