Last week I read Farmer, Farmer What Do You Hear? with many of my students and focused on having the students identify different farm animal sounds to the correct animal.  This week I continued with the farm theme and read Farmer, Farmer Who’s in the Tractor?  The focus for this book is learning farm vocabulary terms and sequencing terms.

I started the lesson by pointing to each animal on the right side of the book and reviewing the names of the animals and each animal sound.

As I read the book, I  touch each word square so the students can follow along with the book and help read some of the words.  For the first page I read “Farmer, Farmer Who’s in the Tractor?”.  Then I moved to the bottom of the page and read “1st a…” and point to the pig in the tractor and wait for the student to say “pig”.  The student has to find the pig from the animals on the right side of the book and attach the pig picture to the empty box on the bottom of the page.  I finish reading the sentence by saying “pig in the tractor”.  You can always add in some “wh” questions by asking “who is in the tractor?”, “what does the pig say?” or “what color is the pig?”

I continue to read the book in the same manner for each page.  After I read the sentence on the bottom of the page I review the animals in the tractor.  For example, after the student puts the sheep on the third page and we finish the sentence I point back to the tractor and say “first a pig, second a cow, “third a sheep”.  I do this for each page to help the student remember the sequential order of the animals for the final page in the book.

At the end book I see if the students can remember the order of the animals.  Sometimes I give the student a choice of 2 animals.  For example I might ask the student, “first a pig or a horse?”  I also sometimes flip back in the book to help the students remember the order.  I added the extra dog picture just so there is always a choice of at least 2 pictures for the students.

I found this book also useful to use with my student who have AAC devices.  The student can navigate the device to find the animals who are in the tractor.  For one of my students I had the student type the animal name and the phrase “in the tractor”.  For example “cow in the tractor” or “sheep in the tractor”.  Again, you can incorporate some core words such as “my turn”, “turn” (for turn page), “in”, and “more” (for more book).  You can also ask “yes/no” and various “wh” questions and have the students use their AAC device to answer.