I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie

Do you have a list of "must have" picture books? If so, get your pen ready, because here is one that you need to add to your list!  My favorite Thanksgiving book is "I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie." Here is our fun retelling activity. Be sure and read to the bottom to grab your FREE Thanksgiving activity!

Here is the book you NEED to get! I just did a search on Amazon, and it is still in print!

To begin the lesson, we talked about what our families eat for Thanksgiving.  Here's what we did.

• I placed these food picture cards into a bag.
• I pulled each item from the bag as we added it to our chart. 
• Then, we pulled the word cards from the bag.
• I asked the children to look at pictures one more time. Then, I told them to look at the beginning letter on the label to help them think about which of the food pictures might begin with that letter.
• I try to always think, "What strategy am I teaching?" This is a perfect time to remind children that good readers use pictures and look at the first letter to help them think about the word.

You can grab the picture cards and the labels in the FREE file at the bottom of this blog post.

To get started with the story portion of the lesson, I made this fun apron of the old lady. I cut the pieces from fabric and used "wonderunder" to adhere them to the apron. You can grab that at any craft store.  I cut out her mouth and made a pocket in the back to hold the pieces.

Before reading, I told the children that our story today was about a lady who ate ALL of the Thanksgiving food. We talked about what we thought would happen to someone who ate too much Thanksgiving food. Now, as I read the story, I fed the pieces into her mouth.  (I find it helpful to number the pieces. I turn them facedown and sequence them by number before I begin.  This makes it really easy to find the next piece as you are reading.) 
There is no benefit in "passing out" the pieces to the children and inviting them to bring the pieces up as you read the story. In fact, that can be a distraction.  They become more interested in who has what piece, and who doesn't have a piece, than the story. Comprehension goes out the window! YOU maintain control of the pieces! As you are telling/reading the story, the pieces provide a visual interest to keep the children's attention on the events occurring in the text.

You can also use this simpler version. Just use clip art of an "old lady" head's, cut out the mouth, and glue to the front of a paper bag.  As you read the story, slip the cards inside her mouth.

After reading, it is time to check for comprehension! An easy way to do that is through retelling! Here are a few things that I think about during this part of the lesson:

• It is always strategy over story! This means that I am not teaching the book, I am teaching how to comprehend a story..."Good readers sequence events, characters, or settings to help them retell." THAT is my teaching point!
• Good readers go back to the book.  I need to teach the children to go back and use the text and pictures to help them sequence the clip art pictures.
• Invite groups of children to come up and hold the food cards to represent the events in the story. Using the text, sequence the pictures.
• As the children feed the pictures into the bag or apron, retell the story!
• Repeat multiple times, inviting various groups of children to help. Each time go back to the text to sequence the pictures.
• Another teaching point, "good readers reread text many times", can also be addressed.  After retelling several times, invite a group of children to sequence the pictures without going back to the text. Once they are in the order they select, invite the children to go back to the text to check for accuracy.  ALWAYS go back to the text to show evidence of your answer!
• See all of this "big kid stuff" we are learning!!!!

Now, it's their turn. Provide the children with a copy of the clip art in the story to color.

Next, cut out the pictures.

Then, using the text, invite the children to sequence the pictures to show the order of the events in the story. Keep reminding them that good readers sequence events, characters, and settings to help them retell the story. We made a fun pie bag to hold the pieces. Simply cut the top off of a paper bag and make a pie crust top out of paper.

Finally, as the children retell the story, they place the pieces inside of the paper bag pie. OR, use an old lady face similar to the one on the bag you made. Glue the face to the front of a paper lunch bag. As the children are retelling, they feed the pieces into the mouth.
Instead of putting the work in their cubbies, consider inviting them to place the retelling activity in their "bag of books" used during independent reading time.  They can retell the story over and over again!

All of the pieces for this activity (except for the Old Lady Apron), are from this Retelling unit that I wrote with Kim Jordano.