June 2011 – Common Core State Standard for Writing #2: Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose informative / explanatory texts in which they name what they are writing about and supply some information about the topic.
Material Needed:
Cash register tape
Pencils
Plastic eggs
2” by 2” white construction paper
Glue stick
Lesson Skills: examining a life cycle, sequencing, writing to compose information and supply information about a topic.
Read the book “What’s Hatching Out of That Egg?” by Patricia Lauber to the class.
Make a Circle Map. In the center of the Circle Map draw a smaller circle and add the picture of an egg inside of it. As children share what they remember from the story, draw and label items they share that come from eggs inside the larger circle. Next, talk about all of the things besides chickens that come from eggs. Let them know that they are going to create the Life Cycle of their favorite living creature from the book.
Activity:
Give each student a piece of cash register paper. Show them how to arrange their paper vertically so that the story will unfold as they unroll their paper. Ask the students which egg/animal they would like to retell information about. Students then choose one or more pieces of construction paper to create their pictures in sequence. Then they lay them out on their cash register strip with enough room in between to write their sentence under the picture. Teacher could look at their placement before they glue them.
Teacher can either have preprinted sentence strips handy for those students who are still developmentally not ready to write their own, or have sentence strips that have a sentence and then a blank spot for them to add at least one word or also write some sentence frames for them to choose from. For those students who are already writing, encourage them to create their own sentences. As the student finishes a sentence strip for a picture, they glue it on. When the story is completely finished, show the students how to wrap their story around a pencil to place in an egg that they have previously chosen.
Extension: This activity can then also be used with the common core listening and speaking standards. Students take turns reading their egg stories with a fellow classmate and they can ask each other questions about their story.
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