Brown Bear Brown Bear : Participation Book

Written by Bill Martin Jr. "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?" is a great book to use for participation in a classroom. The repetitive clauses are easily picked up by students and can be repeated while reading the book. It starts off with a big brown bear that is asked what he sees, the brown bear sees a red bird looking at him. The red bird is asked what he sees, "Red Bird, Red Bird, What do you see? I see a Yellow Duck looking at me." Next is a Blue Horse that sees a green frog looking at him. Every time a new animal is seen by a previous one, the same question is asked and responded to in the same manner. After the Green Frog is a Purple Cat, the Purple Cat sees a White Dog looking at him. The white dog sees a black sheep looking at him. The black sheep sees a goldfish looking at him and the goldfish sees a teacher looking at him. The teacher sees children looking at her. The children see a brown bear, a red bird, a yellow duck, a blue horse, a green frog, a purple cat, a white dog, a black sheep, a goldfish, and a teacher looking at them. After reading the book once or twice depending on the age group, the students and pick up the repetition quickly and they can begin predicting what animal will come next depending on their memory of the order and at the end of the book the students can list all the animals that have been in the book.
I like this simple book because it helps with recognition of some animals and it is fun with the different colors. I am not sure where a blue horse or a purple cat can been seen. The students enjoy being able to go along with the reader once they have the repetition down. There are other books by Bill Martin Jr. with the same repetition and different animals that the teacher can move on two after "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" that the student's can read along with. There is a lot of activities that can be done with this book. You can have color sheets of all the animals for the class to color to help with color recognition and identification of the different animals. The students can even learn the animal sounds make the noises while reading the book.

Martin, Bill Jr. (1983). Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? Livonia, MI:Henry Holt & Company.