The Grinch

I used to not really care for the Grinch until a couple of years ago when something inspired me to try a "Grinch Day" in the classroom.  (Perhaps it was the countless pins I would see making me feel like I was probably the only first grade teacher not doing a Grinch day:)  Ever since then I've been hooked.  Of course, my students love it, but there are so many learning opportunities with this book.

If you have read my previous posts, you know that I am implementing reciprocal teaching.  We have worked on predicting, asking questions, and are now summarizing.  I really like using the Grinch to summarize for two reasons.  Most students have heard the story before, so making predictions and asking questions just doesn't fit well.  And the second reason is that it forces students to focus on the details in the story and not bring in elements from the familiar movie into their summaries.

I divided my students into cooperative learning groups (low, middle, middle, high) and provided them with a paper to write their group's summaries on.  I stopped four times throughout the story and each student took a turn recording their group's summary.  Then we would share those whole class and discuss if the summaries were accurate or needed revision.

One of my students who struggles the most- (I think I mentioned him in my last post and I probably will write about him often because I pour so much effort into supporting him and making sure he experiences success that I can't help but share when I see progress!) - well for the first time ever he volunteered to be the writer for his group first.  (I was keeping things simple and would just have students volunteer to be the next writer for their group and made sure everyone got a turn).  This is a child who I modify nearly every assignment for and getting him to write independently has been challenging.  So, when his group went back to work, they worked perfectly together to come up with a summary sentence and this little boy proudly wrote and then shared it with the class.  The best part of my day (I know I am bit sappy and easy to please) was that I happened to glance over and see him and another boy (actually the "highest" reading student in my class) high five each other when he finished writing.  My heart melted.  I love my reading groups, but this is why I feel it is also important to have opportunities for other types of grouping of students.   You just never know when great things will happen!

Students wrote an opinion paragraph with the prompt: Should the Grinch grin?  We brainstormed a list of reasons on a web and the students independently wrote their paragraphs with a topic sentence, 3 details, and a closing sentence.  We've been doing a lot of these so they did this without much support.  Here are a couple of their pieces.

Instead of a construction paper Grinch, I love to do this directed drawing.  I do this with my own children when we have a Grinch Night at home.  They all love it and it doesn't take much time, just a little patience.  I also feel it actually is very good practice for listening and following directions.  Didn't they turn out so cute?!  The link for the directed drawing (not created by me) can be found here.

I didn't display these in the hallway since we were about to begin winter break.  I had them use their Grinches as the cover for the cubing activity we did.  Cubing is a MAX teaching strategy and a great activity to include higher order thinking skills.  There are so many ways to easily differentiate it as well so it can meet the needs of all of your students.   I kept it simple for the Grinch since it is our first time, but plan do it again in January with our penguin unit.  For our first go at cubing this year, I went over the activity as a whole group then had students work with their assigned partner as I went around providing support where needed.

I use the cubing activity with the Grinch so students can practice analyzing a character using details from the text.  The Grinch is a great character to analyze!  Students had to describe the Grinch, compare/contrast, associate, analyze, apply, and argue for or against.  The pages I made can be found in my Grinch resource here in my TPT store.

ugly goblin

My favorite ever!  He makes me think of my brothers.  Love it!  

When we went through all 6 of the activities, I pulled up the interactive die on the smartboard.  It had each of the Bloom's levels that we used.  A student would tap the die and then pairs would share with the whole group what they came up with.  Students were allowed to revise theirs as they gained new insights from other groups.  (Again, I modified the method slightly from the official directions for cubing, but will more closely follow the format the next time.  For my first graders, I have found that doing it this way the first time helps them better understand the expectations for our next cubing activity).

And of course my principal comes in the week before winter break for my unannounced 30 minute observation!  However, I was relieved that he walked in right as we were beginning the cubing activity.  (Because you know I'm always doing a research based teaching strategy that clearly involves higher order thinking skills:)

The next day I read aloud The Smallest Gift of Christmas.  After reading the story we discussed the theme of the story and made connections to the theme in The Grinch.  We talked about the importance of making connections to the stories we read.  I shared with them how the lessons of the stories we read can stay in our hearts forever.  The students then created little books to share with their families called "What Christmas Means to Me."  Here are a few pages from their books.

This writing activity (along with the Grinch opinion writing and cubing activity) can be found in my TPT store here.

I hope you can find an idea or two to add to your Grinch activities.  I'm so looking forward to Christmas and a relaxing winter break where I can sneak in some work on my penguin unit for the first week in January!