The lesson plan I taught was a fall favorite for students and teacher - pumpkins! Having taught a form of this lesson for many years I decided an upgraded would be fun. This year we would fully investigate two pumpkins in a large and small group settings. This lesson was taught to a junior kindergarten class with 8 students age 4 and 5. My expectations and enthusiasm were high I was excited to begin!
My image of the lesson was to make two groups of children who would investigate a pumpkin as a team. I purposely chose similar pumpkins, but with attributes that I thought could be easily distinguished. Some of the visible differences were: round pumpkin vs. oval pumpkin, dark orange vs. light orange, long stem vs. short stem. Choosing pumpkins
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After finishing our book I share the two pumpkins with the children and the serious discussion about pumpkins began. For 25 minutes the children discussed our pumpkins and pumpkins they had at home, I was encouraged. The children demonstrated what I thought were the ideal visual discrimination skills they would need for our investigation. This portion of our large group lesson was a success!
During our small group lessons the children used their 10-page emergent reader booklet to gather data on their pumpkin. Each page of this booklet featured an attribute of their pumpkin, which we identified and they would document by writing the missing information, e.g., number of lines, weight, height, etc. I purposely spread this part of the lesson over a two-day period so the children would not lose interest.
With our data gathered it was time for pumpkin carving! This was one part of the lesson where I could not keep the children away, several did not want to touch the icky inside but they all wanted to watch! After pulling out the pulp and separated the seeds for counting it was time to carve their pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns! Their participation in designing and carving each pumpkin was a highlight of our