The Bear and The Piano is a stunning book by David Litchfield and tells a story of a bear who finds a piano in the woods. Over time, the noises that he makes become the most beautiful melodies and fill the hearts of those around him.
It seemed like a beautiful text to use for our reading sessions in Year 2. My wife, who is a Year 1 teacher, and I sat down to think of a set of lessons based around the story and the illustrations. I tweeted that we had done this and a few people asked for a copy of the planning.
I sat and had a thought and realised that in 15 years of teaching, I’d never shared my planning publically before. I might have made videos or created resources but actual lesson plans? Nope. It’s a bit daunting really, especially as I have only been in KS1 for a few weeks!
I have incorporated ideas from Reading Rocks when Jo Payne talked about showing video clips to introduce vocabulary. I have put links that show standing ovations or that introduce music on a piano. I would imagine that many of my children have never really listened to piano music before.
In an ideal world, I would share all of the resources too but that would include the flipchart with scanned pages and I wouldn’t want to do that. Hopefully, the plan will show enough to get people started. Once I have taught the unit, I may come back and add a bit more to this post. We shall see.
If you do decide to use any of this, there is a part that mentions sending questions to the author. David Litchfield is on Twitter and I have always found him willing to engage with teachers. I hope he isn’t inundated with messages but if you haven’t seen his other books, do check them out.
I hope that you find this useful 🙂