Little DODO — Phase 1: My First Reading

Phase 1

1. Phase at a Glance

Lessons	10
Storybooks used	Biscuit; Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes; Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?; From Head to Toe; Happy Birthday, Biscuit!
Skills practiced	Fluency Grammar
VT dispositions	Wondering & Questioning × 3 Observing & Describing × 3 Reasoning with Evidence × 2 Making Connections × 2
Phase position	Phase 1 of 3
What's new	Pilot phase — establishing the four-pillar lesson rhythm.

2. Phase Arc

Five picture books across 10 lessons: Biscuit (lessons 1-2), Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes (lessons 3-4), Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? (lessons 5-6), From Head to Toe (lessons 7-8), and Happy Birthday, Biscuit! (lessons 9-10).
Skill spine is fluency at 80%: every lesson builds choral rhythm, repeated refrain confidence, and expressive read-aloud through poems, songs, and predictable text patterns. Grammar appears in 20% of lessons, focusing on adjectives and action verbs.
Four dispositions practice across the phase: Wondering & Questioning (3 lessons), Observing & Describing (3 lessons), Reasoning with Evidence (2 lessons), and Making Connections (2 lessons).
Prep risk: Pete the Cat is picture-heavy (70%+ picture-only pages) with limited clean-text anchors; call-response refrains and word-work will anchor on picture-driven questions rather than text-heavy pages. Brown Bear and From Head to Toe run at or above the 24-page ceiling, requiring tight pacing in the reading-in-class pillar.
Admin flagged the fluency-grammar split at 80-20 as aligned with Phase 1 priors; comprehension units are unavailable in this phase's teaching-unit pool.
Pilot phase establishing the four-pillar lesson rhythm (reading in class, call-response refrains, word work, visible thinking) for the first time.

3. Prep Priority Lessons

Lessons ranked by prep effort: new-book introductions, picture-only-heavy anchor work, rare-disposition stamps, and admin-flagged source-quality concerns rank highest.

Rank	Lesson #	Reason
1	3	First Pete the Cat lesson; the book is picture-heavy with limited clean-text pages, so call-response refrain anchors require more planning. The 33-page range exceeds the 24-page ceiling, demanding pacing strategy.
2	4	Format B on Pete the Cat; word-work anchors face the same picture-density constraint, and the 33-page range persists.
3	7	First From Head to Toe lesson; the book sits at the 24-page ceiling with no margin, so reading-in-class pillar timing will be tight.
4	8	Format B on From Head to Toe; the 24-page ceiling persists, and action-verb word work requires clear anchor planning.
5	5	First Brown Bear lesson; the 26-page range exceeds the ceiling, so pacing strategy matters for the call-response pillar.
6	6	Format B on Brown Bear; the 26-page range persists, and action-verb word work requires anchor verification.
7	1	First lesson of the phase; establishes the four-pillar rhythm. Biscuit runs 20 pages (heavy tier), so reading-in-class timing will be tight.
8	2	Format B on Biscuit; the 20-page heavy tier persists, and the two-song structure requires pre-rehearsal.
9	9	First Happy Birthday, Biscuit! lesson; the book is a catalog reserve extension, but the 14-page range is light. Standard prep.

All other lessons — L10 — standard prep.

4. Weekly Prep Checklist

Lesson 1

This lesson builds oral fluency through a humorous rhyming poem about a pig. Children practice repeated reading to develop rhythm and meter, and they begin recognizing rhyme patterns in short, predictable text.

Re-read Biscuit pp. 3-22 (Format A).
Print word cards: snack, blanket, tucked, curl.

Lesson 2

Fluency practice through two traditional dog-themed songs with repeated refrains. Children chorus the songs together, building confidence with letter patterns (short-i) and repeated lines that support expressive singing.

Re-read Biscuit pp. 3-22 (Format B).
Print word cards: Biscuit, drink, kiss, his.

Lesson 3

This lesson builds fluency and rhythm using a simple action-verb poem with repetition. Children practice reading the repeated lines with expression, predicting the next action in the poem's predictable structure.

Re-read Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes pp. 5-37 (Format A).
Print word cards: walking, cry, Singing, WET.

Lesson 4

Grammar focus on adjectives that describe nouns, especially color words. Children identify and use descriptive words (white, red, blue, brown) that modify the noun 'shoes,' learning how adjectives add detail to simple sentences.

Re-read Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes pp. 5-37 (Format B).
Print word cards: white, red, blue, brown, wet.

Lesson 5

Fluency practice through a counting poem about farm animals. Children read the repeated call-and-response refrain ('What do you see?') and recognize rhyme patterns in the animal names and color words.

Re-read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? pp. 7-32 (Format A).
Print word cards: looking, teacher, children, goldfish.

Lesson 6

This lesson focuses on action verbs with -ing endings (looking, staring, gazing). Children practice fluent, expressive reading of the repeated refrain and identify the action words that describe what each animal does.

Re-read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? pp. 7-32 (Format B).
Print word cards: looking, see.

Lesson 7

Fluency practice using a rhythmic rhyming poem about toes and feet. Children practice repeated reading to develop rhythm and meter, building confidence with the poem's predictable rhyme scheme.

Re-read From Head to Toe pp. 4-27 (Format A).
Print word cards: bend, raise, thump, wriggle, wiggle.

Lesson 8

Grammar focus on action words (verbs) that tell what happens in simple sentences. Children identify action verbs (stomp, clap, thump, wiggle) and practice using them in sentence structure, learning how verbs drive meaning.

Re-read From Head to Toe pp. 4-27 (Format B).
Print word cards: turn, bend, wave, clap, stomp.

Lesson 9

Fluency and expressive reading through a short poem with repeated sound words and actions. Children practice rhythm and repetition, reading with expression to match the playful tone of the birthday party sounds.

Re-read Happy Birthday, Biscuit! pp. 3-16 (Format A).
Print word cards: surprise, birthday, silly, presents.

Lesson 10

This lesson builds fluency by reading and reciting a humorous rhyming poem about a pig. Children practice repeated reading to develop rhythm and meter, and they recognize the double-o sound pattern (woof, balloon) in rhyming words.

Re-read Happy Birthday, Biscuit! pp. 3-16 (Format B).
Print word cards: Woof, balloons, puppy, birthday.

5. Method Manual

Little DODO Method Manual

This is the navigator's reference for facilitating a Little DODO lesson. It is included verbatim in every phase prep guide so navigators have one canonical handbook regardless of which phase they're preparing.

The 25-minute lesson

Every Little DODO lesson is exactly 25 minutes across four pillars. The shape is the same every week:

Pillar	Time	Purpose
Vocabulary Exploration	5 min	3-5 anchored target words (Format A) or a phonics target with example words (Format B). Set the vocabulary load before reading.
Reading in Class	10 min	Picture-walk + read-aloud + chorused refrain. The pedagogical heart.
Questions Time	7 min	1-2 anchored comprehension questions + one extension activity (talk-and-draw for A; word-to-sentence for B).
Conclusion	3 min	Named close ritual aligned to the lesson's VT disposition. Recap prompt + take-home prompt.

The four-pillar rhythm is load-bearing. Children build trust with the structure across weeks. Do not introduce new pillar types or reorder pillars mid-phase.

Format A vs Format B

Each storybook is anchored twice in the same week — once as Format A (story-meaning), once as Format B (phonics-pattern). The book stays the same; the pedagogical angle shifts.

Format A — story meaning focuses on what the story says. Vocabulary is framed around comprehension; questions probe what happened, who acted, and why. Extension is talk-and-draw.

Format B — phonics pattern focuses on how the story sounds. Vocabulary is anchored to a phonics target (a phoneme like short-a, a sight-word category like color words, or a pattern like -ing endings). Questions probe sound recognition or word-building. Extension is word-to-sentence.

The two formats always cover the same book that week, in A-then-B order. Story-comprehension precedes word-work.

Anchoring discipline

Every refrain, target word, and comprehension question on the lesson card carries an anchor — a verbatim quote from a specific page of the storybook. Quotes are not paraphrases. If the page being cited is illustration-only or hard to read on screen, the lesson card points to a neighboring text page instead. The anchor is what the screen-share highlights during the lesson, so it's what the children actually see — handle it as the source line, not a rough reference.

The phonics or grammar skill paired with each lesson is summarized in plain language inside the lesson card itself; you do not need to open the underlying skill source to teach the lesson. Treat the lesson card as the complete brief.

Visible Thinking dispositions

Little DODO uses seven Visible Thinking dispositions. At this stage of reading development the natural fits are Wondering & Questioning, Observing & Describing, Reasoning with Evidence, and Making Connections. The other three (Synthesizing & Connecting, Perspective Taking, Finding Complexity) appear less often; Finding Complexity should be used sparingly because the layered-meaning work it implies hasn't fully landed yet for most readers.

Each lesson stamps a single disposition. The conclusion pillar's named close ritual carries the disposition stamp; the take-home prompt is what parents see of the disposition work.

Picture-only pages

Many picture books have spreads with no extractable text — full-bleed illustrations, decorative title pages. The lesson card never points to these pages for a quoted line or refrain. When a spread is image-only, the anchor lives on a neighboring text page; plan your screen-share around that during prep.

Re-read between A and B

Encourage parents to re-read the storybook once between Format A and Format B at home. The repeat reading is where fluency and confidence build. Home practice is otherwise light: vocabulary exercise (2 sentences × 2 words) + 2 Visible Thinking questions answered out loud or as a short audio reply via ClassIN.

Common navigator mistakes

Letting one loud answerer chorus over the quiet kids. Count to three before accepting an answer.
Skipping the picture-walk before reading. Decoding-only blocks access for non-readers.
Anchoring questions on picture-only pages. Pick a different page.
Talking down to the kids. Early readers know when an adult is performing patience.
Treating Format A and Format B as different stories. The book is the through-line; the two formats are two ways of looking at the same week.