Hello everyone and welcome back to my 4^th blog post! At this point, Alana and I have done a ton of research about Cat in the Hat and the development of elementary aged students. During this process, we have made tremendous success in building and designing a mini unit for Kindergarten teachers to reference or use. We have successfully created a word family worksheet that anyone is welcome to use! It features boxes that students will be able to fill in with the different word families that come to mind. Alana and I have also made some exciting discoveries while working on this mini unit. We learned a lot about the development of young children and how their minds work when they begin to read and write. 

            One of the major challenges we faced was finding three credible sources. We stumbled upon many sources, but none of which that were scholarly and peer reviewed. However, we were able to overcome this issue by using the University’s library website to find valuable sources. In addition to finding sources, another challenge we faced was creating the perfect worksheet. We looked around the internet and were able to find some examples that ultimately led us to the creation of our own. 

            Over the course of my research, I have learned a lot about teaching elementary aged students. One thing I learned in particular is the idea that praising children for their hard work will result in a desire to continue and do more. This is important for our unit because we want to keep the students involved and creating word families with the help and support of one another. A big frustration we had was figuring out what exactly we wanted to create. We had a few choices, such as creating a lesson plan, a tool on word families, or even an in-depth description of Dr. Seuss. We ultimately decided on a mini unit which we hope lots of people will use or reference.