Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
A Children's Book for Learning French, Spanish, German, and ESL
A children's book is a powerful tool for foreign language learning. Whether your students are preschoolers or middle schoolers, use Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? [Henry Holt and Co., 2007] to introduce or review basic concepts in French, Spanish, German, or ESL.
French, Spanish, and German Translations
First, you will need a copy of Brown Bear, Brown Bear in your target language. Check out the Barnes & Noble website for foreign language versions of this picture book.
- Ours brun, dis-moi . . . [French--French & European Pubns, 1999]
- Oso pardo ¿qué ves ahí? [Spanish--Translated by Teresa Mlawer, Henry Holt and Co., 1998]
- Brauner Bär, Wen Siehst Denn Du? [German--Gerstenberg Verlag, 2003]
Vocabulary and Concepts
Brown Bear, Brown Bear is an excellent vehicle for teaching animal vocabulary, colors, and word order. More advanced students can also focus on adjective agreement/placement and, depending on the translation, the use of object pronouns ("at me".) The repetition of questions and answers provides effective, choral pattern practice in the target language. Here are the basic vocabulary terms:
- Brown Bear
- Red Bird
- Yellow Duck
- Blue Horse
- Green Frog
- Purple Cat
- Black Sheep
- Goldfish
- Teacher
- What do you see?
- I see . . . looking at me.
Lessons and Activities
- Read the book to your students. Re-tell it frequently during this unit.
- Create picture flashcards of the basic vocabulary. Drill the vocabulary, distribute the pictures to your students, and retell the story as your students listen for their cue to come to the front of the room with their picture. Line the students up in order.
- After you have done this full-class listening comprehension activity, distribute small picture cards to each student and tell the story again as each individual arranges their cards according to the story.
- Prepare a CLOZE activity of the story with a word bank. Students fill in the blanks and color simple illustrations.
- Teach students how to express their preferences about the animals or colors in the story. Create a human graph or a bar graph depicting students' favorites.
- Eat some gummy bears . . . but first use them for identifing colors, graphing, and counting.
- Create an animal color-by-number activity
- Practice adjective placement and agreement (if applicable). Extend the adjective practice by changing the animals' colors.
- Return to the sequencing cards in step 3. After modeling by the teacher and practice in partners, have students re-tell the story from memory as they arrange their cards in order. This would be an excellent assessment.
- Throughout the unit, play animals and colors vocabulary games to practice the various words and phrases, such as concentration, tic tac toe, and bingo.
Copy-Change "What Do You See?" Writing Project
Once students have mastered the question-answer pattern, they are ready to create their own "Brown Bear" books. Individuals may choose their own animals and colors to illustrate and write about.
Make language learning meaningful and relevant by putting simple words into a context. Children enjoy discovering foreign languages with everyone's favorite--Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
