A
few weeks back, we had a “Stone Soup” week in my classroom. This was
leading up to Thanksgiving (which, of course, occurs in October in
Canada). I really wanted to tie in the ideals of “thankfulness” and
“gratitude” throughout the week.
Monday
I
started the lesson by introducing some vocabulary from the Marcia Brown
version of “Stone Soup”. The class did not know what book we were
reading. There were 4 words – one per chart paper. Students were split
into 4 groups and rotated carousel style, brainstorming ideas on each
word. Once we had discussed as a class, we moved on to a new task: Text
Graffiti. I saw a video about this on someone’s blog recently, and
can’t remember where. If you know the video, please let me know. In
this task – I selected 22 (one per student) lines from the story that
didn’t give away the “big idea”. Each line was taped to the centre of a
paper. Students sat down at a desk and read the line. They then wrote
any ideas about vocabulary, characters, setting, big idea or questions
they had around the text. They were not to put their name. We did 4
rotations. Looking back, I probably did not need to find 22 lines, but
it did work well to provide everyone with different context clues.
Then,
using the vocab words, and the text they had read students had to
create a prediction of the story we were reading with justification.
Some thought we were reading “Shrek” (because of the term village),
others invented stories about kings and soldiers.
Throughout
the story, we paused to discuss story elements. Afterward, students
had to provide their thoughts about the “big idea” of the story. Again,
with justification. To the right is a list of my favourites, which I
typed up and shared with the class the next day. We also worked on
reflecting on goals of the lesson. That part was a bit tricky for them.
Tuesday
On
Tuesday, we repeated the activity. Again, I gave vocabulary words and
we did the text graffiti activity. This time, I used the “Stone Soup”
version from Ann McGovern. Student predictions were more accurate today
as they had heard this version in a previous year, and they also were
expecting the “Stone Soup” theme. Below is my favourite piece of
thinking from the text graffiti activity. Student connections are so
hilarious sometimes!
Wednesday
We had a big assembly with a special guest this day so no “Stone Soup” activities!
Thursday
We
read a third version of the story today: “Bone Button Borscht”. I
really like these spin off books – shows so much creativity! I hadn’t
ever heard of this version before. I found a copy in our Public
Library. This story has a longer text and beautiful illustrations.
It’s a nice combination of the two stories I had already read. A
stranger comes to town and tricks the towns people into creating the
soup. The entire town works together to make something delicious and
has a huge celebration.
We
didn’t repeat the activity of previous days as we were short on time. I
think next year “Stone Soup Week” might become “Stone Soup 2 Weeks”.
Friday
On
Friday, I read “Cactus Soup”. This Mexican version of the story is
very similar to the Marcia Brown version. Again, we just read the
story.
Friday
was the culmination of the activities. Of course we had to make soup!
I had two wonderful parents come in to help out. Students all brought
in items for the soup. I made pumpkin biscuits (with a pumpkin grown in
a student’s field) and another brought in homemade buns. Yum! We had
so much food we ended up making two kinds: beef barley and cream of
potato. Throughout the morning 5 or 6 students at a time went to the
foods room to help the moms peel, cut, stir and season. The smells
through the school were amazing! We had so much extra soup, we shared
with some of the other adults in the building. There is currently 10
large Ziploc bags of soup in the freezer waiting for us on a cold winter
day. I think we will go skating on the school rink and then warm up
with the soup leftovers. I am so happy we made the soup – it brought us
all together as classroom family. Parents came in to eat as well. It
was a great event.
Mrs. Nowell texted me this picture of her bowl of soup. She got a stone! Lucky lady.
A
student had her cousin spend a few days with us that week. Her cousin
was from Switzerland. We shared some amazing Swiss chocolate for
desert.
Mrs.
Holland, our principal, wrote us this thank you note. Seriously, she
has the best teacher printing ever. I’m really jealous.
What did you do for Thanksgiving?
Check out my Pinterest Board for more great Stone Soup ideas!
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