The Three Little Pigs: A Thematic Problem Solving Unit

Presented by Keri Thompson, Kindergarten, Bryant Elementary, Moore

Timing: Last nine weeks of Kindergarten, can be adjusted up

Books Needed:

The Three Little Pigs (original version)- preferably a version where the pigs don’t get eaten!

The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka

The Pigs and Hogs Background Information from the Ag in the Classroom Website or Any nonfiction book about pigs

Whole Group Reading/Science Time:

Materials:

pipe cleaners

popsicle sticks

clay

cotton balls

straws

toilet paper rolls

marshmallows

toothpicks

glue

paper

several rolls of masking tape

blow dryer with eyes and ears

sturdy paper plates or trays

other craft items or recycling

Planning Sheet

Monday- Goal: Identify the Problem

Introduce the poem of the week: “This Little Piggy” This little piggy went to the market. This little piggy stayed home. This little piggy had roast beef. This little piggy had none And this little piggy went wee, wee, wee, All the way home.

Read the beginning of The Three Little Pigs up to the just before they gather materials or build houses.

Identify the characters in the story.

Ask the students what the problem is in the story. Those who have read the story will say they need to build a house, but help guide them to figure out why the pigs need a house. The problem should be something like: The pigs are afraid of the wolf and need a way to stay safe.

Brainstorm a list of solutions.

Talk Time: Syno-walk the word “big” SYNO-Walks are part of the Navigating Readiness curriculum by Payne Education. Basically, you circle all of the students up and each student gives a synonym for the word. The goal is to have at least 5 synonyms.

Tuesday- Goal: Think about each solution.

Read the poem of the week.

Read The Three Little Pigs starting where you left off yesterday and read to the end.

Analyze the wolf: Ask questions about what he can and can’t do, such as, can he jump? What can he blow? What can’t he blow?

Using the list from Monday, write next to each solution the pros and cons. Ask them to keep in mind that we don’t want to hurt anyone badly including wolf and that we have to keep the pigs safe from all the things the wolf can do

Talk Time: Syno-walk the word: “bad”

Wednesday- Goal: Make a plan.

Read the poem of the week.

Read the nonfiction book about pigs.

Look back over the list of possible solutions. As a class, eliminate any of the choices that won’t work, aren’t safe, etc.

Explain the project. o Each partner group will pick a solution. o Today, you will make a plan on how you will build their solution. o On Thursday, you will use the provided materials to make a house, electric fence, or whatever on a

paper plate. o On Friday, we will use the big, bad, blow dryer to see if your project will keep the pigs safe from the

wolf.

Assign the students each a partner.

Explain and handout the planning sheet.

Have out the materials they can use so they are easily viewed. If the students need something they don’t see, you can choose to allow them to request additional items.

Planning should take about 20 minutes.

Thursday- Goal: Build the solution

Read the poem of the week.

Using the planning sheets, have the requested materials laid out for each pair on a plate.

HAVE 1-2 ADULT HELPERS

Allow 1 hour for building time

Encourage the adults to let the students work through the challenges and to ask questions such as: o What seems to be the problem? What could we do to fix that? o I see that you _____ is having trouble standing, which material would help your _______ stand better?

Have extras of each material available. I require my students to ask an adult and explain why they want the material before getting materials off the table to keep students from wasting the materials.

Provide ideas as need, but remember it is okay if some of the solutions don’t work. Friday- Goal: Test and evaluate the solution.

Read the poem of the week.

Add eyes and ears to the blow dryer to make it look like a wolf.

Make a data chart like this:

Partners Standing at beginning On Low On High

Test each solution. Put a check mark if the solution is still standing after sitting there all night, after being exposed to 10-20 seconds on low, and after 10-20 secs on high. Caution: blow dryers can get really hot! Touching the blow dryer can burn students and hot air can melt/soften the clay.

Evaluate by asking questions: o What materials seemed to be the strongest? Weakest? o Which solution seemed to work the best? Worst?

Have them finish the back side of the planning sheet that has them evaluate their own solution.

All along we have taken the side of the pigs, but we haven’t heard the wolf’s side of the story. Read The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. Compare and contrast the stories as recommended in the “This Little Pig” Ag in the Classroom lesson.

Write about it: I believe the _______ because _________

Reading Stations:

Forced rotations of 12-14 minutes each with 4 stations everyday. Students are assigned partners. I have the rotations

premade in a Notebook document so that I just switch slides and don’t have to physically move names.

A. Write around the room, look for a letter or spelling pattern. P for pig, W for wolf, i for pig

B. Read to self- pick 3 books from the classroom library and read them to yourself. Cannot get more books.

C. Ipads- Lexia or whatever ap

D. Teacher Table

E. Journal Writing- free write or specific topic such as write a sentence about pigs.

F. Word work- write sight words on blocks or cups, the students build with them, then say a word and blow it

down. For lower level, have them draw a word card, find the word, and blow it down.

G. Alphabet work- Lower level- Match the capital letter pig to the lowercase mud. Medium level- Word family sort

including the -ig family as suggested in the the “This Little Pig” Ag in the Classroom Lesson. Upper level- word

making

H. Teacher Table

I. Talking Station- Three Little Pigs retell with stick puppets

J. Journal Writing- free write or specific topic (write a sentence with a pig as the character)

K. Partner reading- small basket of near level readers related to topic, they partner read

L. Teacher Table

M. Sorting Station- I can blow, I cannot blow sort

N. Poetry Station- I chose to put the poem of the week from last week in this station. This week’s poem is “This

Little Piggy”

O. Listening Center- Other fairy tales, PebbleGo

P. Teacher Table

Reading Teacher Table ideas:

Have students segment words such as pig, house, stick, brick, bad, big, etc. by putting a pig in each house.

Practice blending or reading words in the -ig family.

Math Whole Group:

Monday- Goal: Learn how to play suduko puzzles

You need at least 1 more suduko puzzle than the number of student in your math stations. Don’t forget to add the shape, number, or color clues to the board. You also need shape, number, or color manipulatives.

On the board, demonstrate how to solve suduko puzzles. o Each row must have 1 of each number, color, or shape. o Each column must have 1 of each number, color, or shape. o Each big square must have 1 of each number, color, or shape.

Tuesday- Goal: Practice determining even and odd numbers.

You need the numbers 0-30 (or however many kids you have) and some sort of road on the floor or board.

Explain that houses on a street are arranged by their address. All of the odd numbered house are on the same side of the street and all of the even houses are on the other side of the street.

Review what makes a number even or odd.

Hand out the houses. Decide whether each house is odd or even and place it on the correct side of the street. You can also order the numbers, using a number line to help as needed.

To extend this, you can give the students a variety of construction paper shapes and ask them to make a house. Then give each student a number to write on it.

To extend this, have the students say the numbers of the even house (count by 2’s). Wednesday- Goal: Place value with 10’s and 1’s

You need: 100 sticks (real or popsicle), rubber bands, number cards with numbers 1-100 or a 10’s and 1’s place value dice

Today the second little pig is going to need to get sticks for his house. Let’s pick (or roll) a number to see how many he needs to buy.

Talk about which digit is in the ten’s place and which is in the one’s.

Use the sticks to make a representation of the number. To speed up this process you can have sticks pre-bundled in 10’s.

Thursday- Goal: Number 3 Fact Families (composing and decomposing the number 3)

You need: 3 houses (real or construction paper) and 3 pigs, optional: marker boards and dry erase markers

Discuss different ways to put the pigs in the houses. (1+1+1, 2+1, 1+2, 3+0, etc)

Write the number sentence for each solution.

Friday- Goal: Make a graph from real data. Analyze the data.

You need: pigs, wolves, a basic graphing frame.

Each student wrote in their journal about whether they believed the pig or the wolf’s side of the story. Now let’s graph it. Give each student a pig or wolf head based on what they wrote. They can color it, cut it out, and write their name on it.

Gather the students on the students if front of the graphing framework. Have each one use a complete a sentence to share which animal they chose and why.

They can then add their animal on the graph.

As each student add their animal, discuss which one has the most, are they equal, or which one has the least. You can also write addition sentences to show that you have added one.

Math Centers:

I do 4 stations per week with 6 students in a group. Each station is about 12-15 minutes. We did 1 station each day,

Monday-Thursday. One station is a teacher small group.

Teacher Table: Number Riddles for numbers 1-10. I used playing cards to help them eliminate possible answers.

Ag in the Classroom Lesson: Hogs on a Diet

o Give students each a cup of a variety of feed grains.

o Have them sort and graph it

o Then they can write addition, subtraction, or comparing number sentences using the data

Suduko Puzzles: I taught this in a whole group lesson on Monday before centers.

Pattern Block: 6 different ways to make a hexagon

Roll and Cover:

o Materials: 2 dice per student (or dice in dice), recording sheet, manipulative for covering.

o Instructions: Use 2 dice. Roll, add, and cover the correct number.

o Can be independent or done in pairs.

o Could also do: roll and add 1, roll and subtract 1, roll number words, roll 1 dice, etc

House subtraction:

o Materials: toilet paper rolls with houses on them, 1 straw piece per child, marker boards, dry erase

markers

o Choose a number of paper towel rolls to start with depending on the current standard you are working

on. Begin writing the number sentence by recording the number of houses you are starting with.

o Have a student use 1 breath a blow down as many houses as possible. Ask what kind of number

sentence do we need to write to show that some houses were blown down.

o Finish writing out the number sentence.

o Read the number sentence together. Read the number sentence as a story problem such as “There once

was 5 houses. The big, bad wolf blew 3 houses down. Now there are 2 houses left.

Names: _____________________________________________

We are going to build a _______________.

We need ____________ and _____________.

I need these because they are

__________________________________________________.

Here is a picture of what we are going to build.

I think our creation:

Will stand Will fall down

This is what our creation looked like after the Big, Bad

Blow Dryer.

Who won?

We did! The Big, Bad, Blow Dryer

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Number Riddle #1: 1. I am greater than 2. 2. I am less than 7. 3. I am not 6. 4. I am the number of sides that a triangle has.

Number Riddle #2: 1. I am between 1 and 6. 2. I am not how many sides a triangle has. 3. I am less than 5. 4. I am greater than 3.

Number Riddle #3: 1. I am between 6 and 10. 2. I am less than 9. 3. I am made with straight lines. 4. I am 3+4.

Number Riddle #4: 1. I am greater than 3. 2. I am greater than 7. 3. I am an even number. 4. I have two digits.

Number Riddle #5: 1. I am an even number. 2. I am less than 7. 3. I am not how many sides a square has. 4. I am greater than 3.

Number Riddle #6: 1. I am between 1 and 10. 2. I am an odd number. 3. I am greater than 5. 4. I am one less than 10.

Suduko Puzzle

Rules:

1. Each row must have 1 of each shape.

2. Each column must have 1 of each shape.

3. Each large square (of 1 rows and 2 columns) must have 1 of each shape.

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Roll and Cover: Use a 6-sided dice. Roll and cover the matching number or number word.

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Roll and Cover: Use a 6-sided dice. Roll and cover one less than the roll.

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Roll and Cover: Use a 6-sided dice. Roll and cover one more than the roll.

7 2

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seven

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Roll and Cover: Use a 10-sided dice. Roll and cover the matching number or number word.

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Roll and Cover: Use a 20-sided dice. Roll and cover the matching 10-frame.