Story Text and Target Vocabulary from a Sample Cornerstones Unit

Text of “The Fox and the Crow” from Between the Lions

One day a fox took a walk in the woods. The fox saw a crow in a tree. The crow had a tiny, but tasty-smelling, piece of cheese in her beak. “Mmmm,” said the fox. “That is one tiny but tasty-smelling piece of cheese.” The fox wanted that piece of cheese. She had to think of a way to get the crow to drop it.

The fox looked up at the crow and said, “Look at that beautiful bird! Oh! Is she gorgeous or what?” The crow puffed herself up with pride as the fox continued. “I’m telling you if that bird could sing, she would be the queen of all birds. That’s right! The queen of all birds! If she could sing, that is.” The crow wanted to be known as the queen of all birds and so she opened her beak and let out a “Caw!”

Unfortunately she also let out the tiny piece of cheese. The poor crow watched the tiny piece of cheese drop, drop, drop, and drop. It did not stop until it popped into the fox’s mouth with a tiny kerplop.

The fox swallowed and said, “Ahh! That was deliciously cheesy and surprisingly easy!” And she ran off into the woods with a skip and a hop. The crow realized that she had learned a very, very, very, very, very, very, very big lesson. Beware of flatterers.

Daily Study of Target Vocabulary

Words and Concepts

The lesson guide provides a conceptual field for each word. A few examples are included here, with additional comments.

Crow

A crow is a kind of bird, it is black and large, it makes an annoying “caw” sound (it does not sing, as much as the fox in the story would like the crow to believe it does).

Bird

A bird has wings, feathers and a beak. Other animals may have wings, but are not necessarily birds (examples are butterflies and other insects).

Not all birds fly (two examples are penguins and ostriches).

Some kinds of birds are swallow (one of our target words), parrot, owl, hummingbird, turkey, rooster, duck, woodpecker (related to wood and our target word woods), eagle, etc.

Other features of birds include claws and a tail, they lay eggs, they build nests.

Different kinds of birds make different kinds of sounds (an owl hoots, a sparrow chirps).

Compound words include scarecrow, birdbath, birdhouse, and birdcage. [A great many of these words seem to be new to the children.]

Tiny

Deaf children have particularly limited knowledge of adjectives and often overuse the few they know, such as big. The lesson guide recommends teaching a continuum of size words (rather than referring to them as synonyms) and explaining to the children that size is relative: a tiny elephant is larger than a giant fly.

The story has a “tiny piece of cheese” and a “big lesson.” Size words can be used in ways not related to size (e.g., “big” lesson means “important” lesson).

One of the computer games we developed has ways to interact with the concepts of huge, big, small and tiny.

Piece of...

The lesson guide suggests

• Help the children understand that a piece can be part of a whole or one of many.
• Bring in items that come in pieces, both food and non-food.
• Look for opportunities to identify things in the environment that come in pieces.

Correct usage of piece of... is a challenge to many children. Some foods can be cut into pieces, such as pizza, fruit, or cake. Sometimes the piece is called a slice (bread, pizza). One can have a piece of candy or gum, but not a piece of jellybean. During the field test, one boy kept insisting that a single cheese cracker was a piece of cheese cracker.

Non-food items were even more difficult. We say piece of paper, but not piece of napkin; piece of chalk, but not piece of crayon. We don’t say piece of nail or piece of leaf, even though a single nail or leaf can appear to be one of many. We do say piece of tape, string, and wood. Children need a lot of practice using these words and coming up with their own examples.