As you know, we kicked off a unit on Nutrition with our field trip a few weeks ago. We are reading nonfiction text about the food groups. Friday we discussed dairy. Today we started our discussion with the protein group, then reviewed dairy and talked about how protein is found in milk. I passed out a carton of milk to each child. We examined the packaging and talked about the nonfiction text features like bold text, italics, different fonts, etc. Then we learned how to read the nutritional label. We have been working on persuasive writing and learning how to provide our audience with strong arguments. We made the connection that by knowing how to read labels properly, we can make strong arguments to our parents about why they should or should not buy a product at the store. (Sorry if this leads to some crafty persuasion at the grocery!!). After this discussion, I passed out sugar free pudding mix and we talked about having treats in moderation and about how sugar free treats are good options. We examined the text features on the pudding boxes.....then.......the kids found out that they were going to make the pudding and EAT IT!!! Okay....some of you may not realize how HUGE this was to the kids. We never eat in class!!! You would think I announced that we were going to Disneyland! This was exciting stuff for a Monday morning! Kids had to work in pairs to figure out how to make pudding only using 1 box of mix, two cartons of milk, and plastic spoons. The sugar free pudding was chocolate because it was leading to our kick-off of our Chocolate Literature Circles. The healthy chocolate snack would help us build our schemas or background knowledge in order to better understand our chocolate themed novels. Follow me so far? Basically, the connections just wouldn't stop!
Below is a picture of Allison and Jack working hard on mixing their pudding.
I know these kids so well that I predicted someone wouldn't want chocolate! Nate and Keenan were thrilled to work on their vanilla schemas instead! They mixed vanilla pudding and passed on the chocolate.
After making a huge mess in the classroom, along with a TON of learning connections, the kids sat in their Literature Circle groups to eat their snack and start making predictions about their chocolate novels. Below you can see Helen, Evelyn, and Leah deep in conversation about their predictions for their story. I love listening in on these reading discussions.....lots of great thinking going on.
In our classroom, we have a bulletin board called "I Can." Each day we write "I Can" statements on the board to set the objective for our lessons that day. Today we drew arrows to show all the crazy connections we were making! The kids are learning that they can do so many things!
So.....if your kid came home today and said, "We had pudding at school" but neglected to share anything else, now you know the full story!! Who knew that nonfiction text features, the dairy and protein groups, persuasive writing, and schema building could all be rolled into one tasty lesson? I have to give a special shout-out to Natalie and Zoe who volunteered to stay inside for the first ten minutes of their recess just to help me clean desktops. Let's just say there were a lot of traces of chocolate pudding powder all over!!
