Introduce Concept Board: Ideas about Responsibility
 The concept board is a bulletin board that stands year-round for the purpose of sharing ideas and communications about unit concepts.  Students, parents, and teachers can post pictures or drawings with captions, newspaper clippings, magazine articles, cartoon strips, or written ideas on note cards at any time during the unit.  When a new unit is introduced, initial knowledge recordings about concepts are posted, and then as the unit is developed, additional information is accumulated throughout the duration of the unit.  Information is reviewed daily at the beginning of the Reading Block, and at the end of the unit, the total mass of information is summarized and shared in class.  Finally, the messages on the board are compiled into the “Class Concept Book” for future reference.

Activating Prior Knowledge:
 Ask the children to discuss what they know about responsibility. Spend enough time discussing responsibility so that children feel comfortable expressing their opinions openly and honestly.  Read any short newspaper clipping or current event article that you feel illustrates an act of responsibility clearly, and will serve to motivate children to add their feelings and opinions about the article, and the concept itself.  A recent example of a  current event that was on the new this week that I told the children about was a Terrier dog that recently had puppies who nursed an orphaned kitten along with her puppies, and took care of it until it could survive on its own with standard kitten chow and formula.  The fact that it was a dog that took care of a kitten was amazing to the children because of the stereotypes about dogs and cats being enemies.  It was then easy to have the children complete the next part of this unit preview.

Setting Reading Goals and Expectations
 Explain to the children that they will be reading four books by Leo Lionni.
Show them the books, and share observations about the illustrations and themes.  Children will notice that the books all have animals for main characters, and that the animals are very much like the classroom pets we share.  Explain that throughout this unit they will be participating in activities which will extend their experiences and expand their knowledge about responsibility.

Asking Questions
 After discussing the unit theme of Responsibility, reading the newspaper clipping or other current event illustrating this theme, posting it on the concept board as the first item of information to start off the unit, and sharing ideas about aspects of responsibility,
encourage children to discuss questions that they would like to pursue as they read the stories, Swimmy, Fish Is Fish, Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse, and  Frederick.  Now
pass out strips of tagboard for writing one question that they would like to talk more about.  Collect the sentence strips and post them to the Question Board.   This could be either a bulletin board space that is reserved for questions, or else a pocket chart that hangs at the front of the room so that it can be used for constant reference.
 Next, in Response Journal, have the children write the following ideas:

1.  This is what I know about responsibility before reading the stories in the unit:
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2. These are  my ideas about responsibility after reading the stories :_____________________________________
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( This format can be xeroxed so that children can either cut it out and glue it in the journals, or else passed out so that they can copy it into their journals.  This format can be used at the beginning of any unit, and then referred to later when the unit is finished.)