Thrills and Frills in First: Pumpkins Galore!

With Halloween and Thanksgiving around the corner…what's better than a unit on PUMPKINS! Our class began this percolating pumpkin extravaganza by discussing their they preexisting schema. We cut out little pumpkin seeds to put down our thoughts and added them to the little pumpkin. I left cut-outs of seeds on the board for students to fill out as they begin to learn new things about pumpkins. This anchor chart was taken from The First Grade Parade and it is just wonderful!

To build some background knowledge about pumpkins…we started with a close reading activity based on the story From Seed to Pumpkin. This close reading activity took us three days and brought the students through an in-depth investigation with vocabulary, comprehension questions, finding and citing evidence, and sooooooo much more.

Students focused on finding text evidence before writing down an answer to their comprehension questions. We use post-it notes with the word "CLUE" to indicate where we found the answer within the text. Students are also learning to restate their question as they answer it. After the three day close read, students were able to find evidence, restate the question and use context clues to predict the meaning of difficult vocabulary words.

Our From Seed to Pumpkin unit can be found at our teacherspayteachers website!