The Squirrel

-Anonymous
Becky Miles Poem Lesson

Furly, Curly
Whisky Frisky,
What a tail!
Hippity Hop,
Tall as a feather
Up he goes
Broad as a snail!
To the tree top!
Wheres his
Whirly, Twirly,
supper?
Round and round In the shell,
Down he
Snappity,
scampers
crackity
To the ground
Out it fell!

Day 1 Thinking Critically

What is a squirrel?
What do squirrels like to do?
Where can you find a squirrel?
What are some words that describe
squirrels and what they do?

Day 2 Exploring Language

Some of the difficult words in the poem: scampers,
whisky, whirly, broad, furly
For this day, the students can play a game of
charades with the words from the poem. Some of the
words that they could act out would be: whirly,
twirly, scamper, round and round, hippity, hop, up,
tree, fell.
Another activity would be to play vocabulary
Pictionary in group of four. One student draws a card
and the other students need to try and guess the
word they are drawing. This poem works well for this
because there are a lot of descriptive words including:
ground, tree, snail, tall, feather, round, shell, tail, up,
and down.


Day 3 Exploring Language

We will talk about the punctuation in the

poem. (Ex. question marks, exclamation
points, commas)
The students can write the poem in the
form that the poem takes shape of. They
could write it twirling on the page or in
the shape of a tree. They will use the
words to help determine what shape to
create. See next slide for an example.

Day 4 Exploring Language

Consonant blends
Broad, crackity, frisky, ground, tree, scampers,
frisky, whisky, snail, snappity, shell, the, feather,
what, where, whisky, whirly, crackity, squirrel

Vowels
Long a- a, tail, snail,
Short a- what, and, tall, as, snappity, crackity,
Short i- whisky, hippity, frisky, whirly, twirly, his,
in, it
Long o- goes,
Short o- to, top, broad, out

 Vowel combinations
Tail, snail, feather, tree, broad, goes, round,
ground, out, squirrel

R, L, W Controlled Vowels
Feather, where, supper, scamper, squirrel,
whirly, twirly, furly, curly, down

Syllables
1 syllable- hop, up, he, goes, to, the, tree, top,
round, and, down, ground, what, a, tail, tall, as,
broad, snail, his, wheres, in, the , shell, out, it,
fell
2 syllables- whisky, frisky, whirly, twirly,
scampers, furly, curly, feather, supper,
3 syllables- hippity, snappity, crackity,

 Prefixes/suffixes
Whirly, twirly, furly, curly; feather, scamper,
supper; whisky, whirly, what, where

Plurals
(N/A)

Contractions
Wheres

Compound words
(N/A)

Silent letters
Crackity, goes, feather, supper

Sight words
The, and, a, in, it, he, as, his, what, up, out,
down

Day 5 Processing Information

Today, we will sing the poem. It goes
to the tune of Wags the Dog.
Once the students learn the song,
they can add actions where the
poem describes what is happening.
Scampering, whirly, twirly, down, up,
hop, round and round, down to the
ground, tail, tall, broad, fell