Kelly's Classroom Online: The Adventures of Noah by Lori Brown

Animal shelters provide an important service in our communities. They bring in dogs, cats, and other animals who are homeless or unwanted. The people who work at animal shelters make sure the animals get proper food to eat and clean water to drink. They also clean their cages, take the dogs on walks, and provide medical treatment to the animals as needed. It is estimated that as many as 62 million dogs and 64 million cats are in animal shelters across the United States. Some of these animals will be adopted into loving homes. Unfortunately, many will not. Adventures of Noah tells the story of one lucky puppy who finds his 'happily-ever-after.'

Adjectives and characterization with The Adventures of Noah by Lori Brown. Noah is a rescue dog who found his forever home. Based on a true story.

Disclosure: Affiliate links to Amazon are included in this post.

Author's Summary

A puppy named Noah tells about life as he knows it, and then one incredible thing happens to him. Great Book. It's called Adventures of Noah, hoping to have 5 or 6 more books to follow, hence, Adventures. Cute story told from puppy's perspective.

🍎 Title: Adventures of Noah
🍎 Author: Lori Brown
🍎 Illustrator: Lori Brown
🍎 Date: April 12, 2019
🍎 Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc
🍎 Pages: 25

Adventures of Noah is a true story told from a puppy's point of view. Noah is a beagle-basset hound mix who was dropped off at an animal shelter and spends his days waiting for a family to adopt him and give him a 'forever home.' He is there for a while and watches as one of his littermates gets adopted before him. Eventually, a couple comes into the animal shelter, sees Noah, falls in love with him, and gives him a 'forever home' of his own.

Lesson Plan Ideas

Before reading Adventures of Noah with your students, you may need to do some schema building and have a conversation about animal shelters, what they do, and how they help the community. You will discover that some of your students already know a lot about animal shelters because they've gotten their pets from one. Others may ask about shelters euthanizing pets that are too sick or too old to be adopted. (Half of all animals in animal shelters will never be adopted and, unless they are in a no-kill shelter, they will be euthanized.) Be prepared to answer any questions that pop up in a manner appropriate for your students' ages and developmental stages.

1. Picture walk Adventures of Noah before reading it with your class. Look at each page. Discuss what is happening on each page. What is Noah doing? How do you think he's feeling? What do you think will happen to Noah? What makes you think that? What happens to Noah at the end of the story? How does that make you feel?

2. After picture walking through Adventures of Noah, it is time to read the book to your class. Remind your students this book is written from Noah's point of view which means they'll be able to see how Noah is feeling and thinking about everything happening around him. This is a good time to introduce characterization... the process by which the author reveals the personality or character traits of the main characters. Ask your students several times throughout the story, "What did we learn about Noah just now?" At the end of the story ask them, "What kind of dog is Noah?" "What makes you think that?"

3. You picture walked Adventures of Noah. You read the book to your class. You even talked about characterization and Noah's character traits. If you'd like, you can integrate a mini-lesson about adjectives at this point... assuming your students are old enough to understand what adjectives are. My students and I did a quick review of adjectives and went through the book looking for adjectives describing Noah. We wrote them down and made an anchor chart. The parentheses around some of the words simply indicate other adjectives they found in the book but didn't describe Noah.

4. When your lessons are over, let your students have some fun and draw pictures of Noah. Give them some blank paper and some crayons, markers, colored pencils, etc. They can draw Noah any way they want, but only if their drawings match the descriptions on the anchor chart!

Some Pictures of Noah

Everybody loves little Noah! Here are some of the drawings children made of him. Do their pictures make him look little, cute, happy, and nice? Do they make Noah look handsome? I think they do!