I absolutely love using this story in my classroom every year. I have gradually bought the new version of the story and my kids love to compare them. I made this last year during the school year but I realized that I never blogged about this set. Shame on me.............. Well, I wanted to share with you what all I use it for and how I use it in my room. I always put parts of it in centers and use part for whole class. I love to use the different versions for character traits and comparing different characters. It just seems to help the light bulb start flashing. What is it about those cute little pigs?
Sequencing is always a hard concept for my students. It seems that they can do it whole group but when you put it in test format, they are lost. So........... we really worked in several different ways with lots of higher level questions to prepare them for their comprehension stories and questions. I had to get used to rephrasing my questions to be worded more like our multiple choice questions on our assessments. Did I mention that I love interactive journals?????? I try to find ways to incorporate them into every lesson possible. The kids LOVE doing them and they LOVE taking them home for a keepsake at the end of the year.
Transitional words can also be difficult for our little ones. I try to use them as many different ways as possible to get them used to all of them. This is so important when they move on to those higher grades and start state assessments. So.......... I added all of the versions that you might need into this set. You can use these with any stories you use.
A little differentiation for our babies........
My kids LOVE retelling and I try to make stick puppets for a little readers theater. It just depends on how much time I have to work on it. I included black and white for those of us who don't have colored ink.
I love to incorporate writing anytime I get a chance. If we start on one of these and the kids don't finish, we complete it during centers. I have them keep a "working folder" for anything that they don't complete. Anytime they have something in their working folder............ we pull them out anytime we have centers. They have to complete any of the activities in that folder before they can go to centers. Did I mention that centers are GOLD in my room?
