Teaching Day-by-Day: Shoes

Week One - Shoes in Sports
1. Do action-research with your students. Have them survey their families to find out how many pairs of shoes each person owns, where they were made and what each is made of. Students should ask what pair is each family member's favorite and share their results with the class.
2. Brainstorm a list with your class of all the different kinds of special shoes there are for playing different sports. Why do they think certain shoes are used only for certain sports? Ask them to devise their own pair of shoes that might help them better complete a favorite activity.
3. Initiate a search for inventors of different sports shoes by telling your students that Benjamin Franklin invented swimming fins in the 1700s. Have students work in pairs to search the web and discover who invented ballet slippers, baseball cleats, etc.
4. Create Talking Drawings by having each student draw a picture to illustrate how the sports shoe they researched was invented. Make sure students add cartoon bubbles with words to explain the invention and picture. Post students' artwork in the classroom.
5. Have each student interview an athlete to find out what kind of shoes he or she wears, what they're made of, how much they cost, when and where they were purchased and how the shoes help them in their sport.

Week Two - Hot Weather Shoes

6. Make a chart with your students of the results of the interviews they conducted last week. Help students analyze their data to identify patterns of information and transcribe any themes they see.
7. Invite a physical education teacher or the school nurse to talk to your students about the anatomy of a foot – arch, ball, toes, heel – and good foot care practices. Make sure all your students can tie their shoelaces and ask them to teach each other if they can't.
8. Use catalogs or other shoe ads to sharpen your students' math skills. Tell them that they each have $200 to spend on shoes for their family. Don't forget to have them add tax and shipping charges when appropriate.
9. Brainstorm a list on chart paper of all the different kinds of shoes people wear in hot weather and warm climates around the world. Would this kind of footwear be appropriate in your climate?

10. Have a Shoe Story Fest in which each student becomes his or her favorite pair of flip-flops or sandals and tells a story about where the shoe began its life, where it has traveled, what it has seen and where it hopes to go one day.
11. Challenge students to create a unique hot weather shoe that serves a special purpose and have them draw a picture of it with colored markers, pens, paint or different materials to create a collage. Make a display of their special hot footwear creations.
12. Pair students and give them five minutes to list all the different meanings for the word foot and put each in its own sentence. If they have trouble, suggest they use a dictionary or thesaurus (Hint: there are at least five different meanings).

Week Three - Cold Weather Shoes

13. With your students, discover new words from the TV, newspapers and catalogs for footwear worn in the country in warm weather – waders, jellies, clogs. Add these to the list you started last week.
14. Ask students to look up the word horseshoes in the dictionary. Find out where it originated and ask how many students have played it. To which school sport is the game similar?
15. Type the words kids' footwear into a search engine. Critically analyze each site. Help students determine what footwear for warm weather each website sells, which sites are retail, which are wholesale and cautions to keep in mind when buying on the Internet.
16. Brainstorm a list on chart paper of all the different kinds of shoes people wear in cold climates and snowy weather around the world.
17. Pair students and give them five minutes to list all the different meanings for the word boot and put each meaning in its own sentence. If they have trouble, suggest using a dictionary or thesaurus. The kids should come up with at least five different meanings.
18. Draw various animal tracks on a sheet of chart paper from a book like Winter: Tracks in the Snow Janet McDonnell (Scholastic, 1994). Read the book to your students and ask them to identify the animal track you've drawn as you read from the book.

19. Place students in groups and have each student choose a cold weather shoe to research and report on to the class. Here are some possibilities: snowshoes, figure skates, speed skates, hockey skates, etc.

Week Four - More Fabulous Footwear

20. Go to www.kidshealth.org with your class and click on "Kids," then click on "My Body and Nails." Discuss keratin (the material hair and nails are made of) with your students.
21. Read to your class the book, Summer Coat, Winter Coat: The Story of a Snowshoe Hare (Soundprints, 1994) by Joe Boyle. Discuss the special adaptations animals make for different climates and weather.

22. Play word tag with your students to build footwear vocabulary. Name a shoe material or part of a shoe like leather. Have a student continue naming a related word that begins with the last letter of leather. She or he might say rubber and the next student says a related word beginning with r.
23. As homework, ask students to define shoo-fly pie. Direct them to search in the indexes of their family's cookbooks and bring in any shoo-fly pie recipes they find. Compare recipes and make a shoo-fly pie for your class to eat!
24. Visit www.enchantedlearning.com to find the words and rebus picture for the nursery rhyme, "There Was An Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe." Read it with your class and encourage students to create new nursery rhymes from it using their favorite footwear.
25. Using collage art, have your students draw illustrations for their newly created nursery rhymes. Have them share their rhymes and pictures before posting them in your room or hanging them in the hall.
26. Visit first-school.ws where you'll find a variety of other activities and lessons related to shoes that you can do with your class.


Week Five - If the shoe fits

27. Challenge students to do some research to find out what the word gumshoe (another word for detective) means and why the word is a good fit for what the job involves.
28. Learn about proverbs (and hear Benjamin Franklin say them) at the Franklin Institute website at sln.fi.edu. Discover what each proverb means and help students with their own guesses. See if they know the meaning of, "If the shoe fits, wear it."
29. Pair students and have each student take off one shoe. Ask each pair to make a Venn Diagram and record a comparison of the two different shoes (size, color, style, material, maker, age, etc.). Have students share these in small groups and then identify class themes.
30. Teach geography by having students bring in a shoe that has traveled the farthest away from home. Using a U.S. and world map, identify with a small Post-it®, the shoe owner's name and the city and country where each shoe has been.

Karen Bromley is a Professor of Literacy in the School of Education and Human Development at Binghamton University in Binghamton, NY where she teaches graduate courses in literacy, language arts and children's literature.

Updated November 2009
November/December 2003, Vol.34, No.3