Chickens we love Chickens

Here are two activities that students at Sargent Park School did

Chicken Games

This is an activity the grade 2's at Sargent Park did in Collaboration with an elementary school in Jacksonville, Florida using the book "Big Chickens" by Leslie Helakjoski. In gym the children were taught a variety of games using a rubber chicken.



Hatching our Chickens


The Kindergarten students at Sargent Park School in Winnipeg, Manitoba hatched chicken eggs in their classroom. This video shows the story of their journey in learning about chicken egg hatching. We are contributing to the Big Chicken project in collaboration with a school in Jacksonville, Florida.

Big Chicken Endings - Mr. O's Third Grade

Hello all!

This is our class acting out new endings to Big Chickens. We hope you enjoy each one. These are third grade students...the finest in Michigan! Each play begins when the WOLF is in the cave and the chickens don't know what he is!

Using Big Huge Labs

We used a site called Big Huge Labs to create a poster for our book of the month Big Chickens. Check it out, it's lots of fun!

Our Big Chicken Chart

Our teacher got a Twitter message about The Big Chicken Project so we decided to join the group because we're no chickens! We read the book aloud and looked at the Big Chickens Blog. It was great to see all of the different projects the classes had done. We left comments on some of them and we looked at the cluster map to see that people all over the world were looking at the same website we were looking at. We made a chart together that showed what we were afraid of. We had cows, water, caves, and growls to choose from. Every girl in Junior Kindergarten got one vote. (We don't have any boys at our school.) We were most afraid of growls and least afraid of cows. The book was very funny and we liked the part where the wolf was afraid of the chickens.
From the Junior Kindergarten Girls at St. Mary's School in Memphis, TN.

Mall-ard's "Big Chicken" Retelling

Big Chickens is a wonderful book that the children loved hearing again and again. Students made paper bag puppets and put together the following play. We hope you enjoy it! Special thanks to Conor - who is reading the book.



Big Chickens Puppet Show from Cheryl Dillard on Vimeo.

Big Chickens Visit Chets Creek

BubbleShare: Share photos - Easy Photo Sharing


Our class decided to write a Chets Creek version of this entertaining story. We tried several different websites before finally deciding to use BubbleShare to tell our story. We hope you enjoy it!

By Mrs. Ross and Mrs. McLeod's Second Graders

Are You a Big Chicken?

Are you a big chicken? Leslie Helakoski’s book, Big Chickens, is the story of four frightened fouls fleeing (alliteration) a wolf who wanders into the barnyard. In an effort to escape, they hoot, scoot, and boot (rhyming words) it out of there and into one dangerous situation after another.
Today, in Readers’ Workshop, we took a picture walk of Henry Cole’s illustrations and inferred the feelings of both the frightened fouls and the wandering wolf. Read our class’ comments about what these characters are really like.

http://chascin.edublogs.org/

The Powers of Persuasion

This month, our class explored the world of persuasive reading and writing. We began by studying and creating printed advertisements. Next came commercials. After thorough research in class and at home, we began crafting our own commercials. This activity fit in perfectly with our most recent Book of the Month, Big Chickens, by Leslie Helakoski.


Students worked in pairs to choose a persuasive topic based on the book. Topics ranged from persuading the audience to read the book, to persuading characters within the book to make certain choices. We are pleased to present a few of our commercials for your viewing pleasure, but we warn you, our powers of persuasion are strong!


Poffersons Persuade the Big Chickens from Lauren Morgan on Vimeo.

Big Chickens

Ms. Alleyne and Mrs. Barnhart's Kindergarten class did a retelling of the book Big Chickens, by Leslie Helakoski. Our students illustrated the story and then retold each page. Look below for our retelling.

Miss Brown & Mrs. Cole's Persuasive Letters

Miss Brown and Mrs. Cole's second grade class wrote persuasive letters to the chickens telling them whether they thought they were brave chickens or "chicken" chickens. Below is a video of of some of the students sharing their letters.

I'm A Big Chicken When...

After reading Big Chickens, Mrs. Cothern and Mrs. Ellis' kindergarten class drew pictures of what they were afraid of. They felt like they could identify with the crazy chickens from the story. Their class has shared their ideas with you below.

Just a Bit of Chicken Schema

Our Kindergartners have been using their "schema" to make connections to text. Of course, what better text to use this strategy with than "Big Chickens"! Each student was interviewed during their Individual Reading Time to relate their text-to-self connection for "Big Chickens". This interview was done with a Flip Camera and then uploaded onto VoiceThread. When reviewed it is easy to see that we all have very different schema when reading a story! Their connections are eggcellent :).

Responding to "Big Chickens" the CC Way

My students have been working on responding to literature based on the elements of Writing Standard 2. The students brainstormed different ways in which they could respond to the March book of the month titled, "Big Chickens" by Leslie Helakoski. The students used a FlipVideo to record each others presentation. Here are the different ways in which the students responded to the book of the month. 

1. Wrote diary entries from the wolf's/chicken's perspective

2. Wrote and sang a song about life on the farm

3. Interviewed students acting as the wolf or chicken

4. Created a sequel to Big Chickens 

5. Wrote a poem about how the chickens felt

6. Created a "Big Chickens Trouble" board game

7. Acted out a telephone conversation between the chicken and the farmer

Big Chickens 2 (The Student Sequel) from Antonia Chant on Vimeo.

Dance, Chickens, Dance!

Mrs. Meissner's kindergarten class joined forces with Ms. Ossi and Mrs. Lankford's second grade classes, to respond to the book Big Chickens by Leslie Helakoski. The combined classes performed the Chicken Dance, and then worked collaboratively to create a Functional Writing piece about "How to Dance the Chicken Dance."


Dance, Chicken, Dance! from Antonia Chant on Vimeo.


Functional Writing from Antonia Chant on Vimeo.

Big Chickens - The Untold Story

Here is rest of the story told by Mrs. Harbour's & Mrs. VanAlstyne's class.

The students at the Four Corners are not BIG CHICKENS!

...when it comes to technology, that is. Here are our reponses to the book of the month from Mr.Pinchot, Ms.Launey, Mrs.Lopez, and Mrs.Phillip's classes.





We decided to let the children chose how to respond. They had a choice between acting in a readers theater, or drawing and doing a voice over about the Story Elements. Enjoy our reponses:


Ms.Lopez Homeroom Reader's Theater from melissalauney on Vimeo.


Untitled from melissalauney on Vimeo.


Lopez/Phillips Audio Visual Responses from melissalauney on Vimeo.


Launey/Pinchot Audio-Visual Responses from melissalauney on Vimeo.

Readers' Theater

Just like the previous post, our three classes did readers' theater productions of Leslie Helakoski's Big Chickens! We loved learning how to read with expression and working on our intonation and diction. We got to perform our readers theater for Miss Lewis and Miss Thomson's Kindergarten, Mrs. Bridges' Kindergaten, Mrs Alvarado's first grade, Mrs. Van Alstyne and Mrs. Harbour's first grade, Miss Hoffmann and Miss Patterson's second grade, Mrs. Nash's third grade, and Mrs. Metzger and Mrs. Morris' third grade! We hope you enjoy our play too!


Big Chickens by, The Lipsky Team from Jessie Lipsky on Vimeo.


Big Chickens by, Mrs. Wallace's Homeroom from Jessie Lipsky on Vimeo.


Big Chickens by, Ms. Symons and Ms. Wickert's Homeroom from Jessie Lipsky on Vimeo.

Reader's Theater

Our class really enjoyed reading the book of the month, Big Chickens by Leslie Helakoski. After reading the book our class decided to do a Reader's Theater with this book. Check out or video to see how creaive our students are!

The Big Chickens Meet Wordle

Teachers are always searching for cool new ways to reach their students. While working on the Big Chickens Project the TDR’s decided (after suggestions from our favorite ESE teacher) to utilize Wordle. Wordle is a great little tool you can use to help create “word clouds”. Words that appear more frequently in your text are greatly pronounced based on how often the word is used. You can create different fonts, color schemes and layouts. This is a great tool for any grade level or project. After reading Big Chickens by Leslie Helakjoski we had our students pick three words each that they thought best described the book. We entered the words into the Wordle website and our “word cloud” was created! I don’t know about you but I see a lot more fun with site words in our future!

Big Chicken Magazine

Our class LOVED the book Big Chickens! After reading and discussing the author's message of the book, I asked the students to think about a time in their lives that they were afraid and to also reflect on how that all changed. Every boy and girl could relate, and students were sent off to write about this time of overcoming a fear: "I used to be a big chicken, until..." Key components of the response that I expected were: identifying the fear, why was it a fear/what went through their mind, how did they overcome it, and how are they different now that it has been conquered. As part two of the assignment, students then drew a 'before' and 'after' picture to visually show the growth they had made in conquering the fear.



ABOUT THIS WEB 2.0 TOOL:
While searching for a 'fresh' way to present student work (I feel Voicethreaded out! lol), I found this great site called Issuu. Issue takes your Word, PDF, and Powerpoint documents and turns them into online publications. There is a lot of patience and creativityrequired as you must upload the material EXACTLY as you want it. You must also be prepared to need to reload the document completely if changes or additions are needed; and to trouble shoot if some elements upload 'funky!' Overall, though, this a great, easy way to make a class book or magazine out of student writing, journaling, photos, reflections... or even for portfolio constructing!

Finding the Theme in 2nd Grade

After a reading lesson on theme, or the main message the author is trying to tell, we read the March book of month Big Chickens. Next, my 2nd grade students were told to think about the lessons the characters learned and what they felt the theme of the book was. Students learned that good readers can argue what made them decide on the theme by providing specific details in the story that led them to believe this. Posted above are several students who did a great job of writing the theme and explaining what details from the story supported their thinking.

This assignment is a simple way children can respond to a book. However, it is an extremely meaningful way to encourage children to think deeper about a story. Please encourage your child to always think about the theme as they read and explain what led them to this conclusion.