An important goal of ours is to create a true classroom community. That’s why we spend a few weeks at the beginning of our year focusing on friendship. We kicked off our friendship unit this year with lots of books and activities based on Mo Willems’ Elephant and Piggie books. The students think the books are hilarious, and we have so much fun reading them!
The speech bubbles have been a great way to introduce point
of view. We even did our own
shared writing with speech bubbles.
After reading Watch Me Throw the Ball, we asked the students what
they can do. The students
answered, “Watch me . . .”
Then we read I Am Going, and the students shared
places they like to go.
Throughout the week, we practiced reading in a sort of
call-and-response form, all the while tracking as we read. It has been great practice and a fun
way for the students to share with the class about themselves - their favorite topic, of course!
We also used Elephant and Piggie to do our first character
study. We got some great ideas
from this
packet from “What’s the Buzz in First” on TpT. We created an anchor chart for the characters. The students came up with lots of great
characteristics that describe Elephant and Piggie.
We also made paper plate Geralds and Piggies. The students loved using their paper
plate puppets to act out and retell their favorite stories. (I wish I had save some of theirs for a photo. They did such a great job! But I sent them home, so you’ll have to
see what mine look like.)
Coming up, we are going to focus on the character traits of
good friends using more of these wonderful books. We got some great ideas from “The
World of Elephant and Piggie”.
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