Lesson Plan for the Trade Book Pumpkin Town!
Teach the Reading Skills of Cause and Effect and Making Predictions
Oct 16, 2008
When José and his brothers toss away their extra pumpkin seeds without thinking ahead about the consequences of their actions, an entire town is affected. Use the trade book Pumpkin Town! by Katie McKay [Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006] as part of an elementary reading lesson teaching how to identify causes and effects and how to make predictions.
Objectives
- Students will identify cause and effect relationships in the plot of a trade book.
- Students will use prior knowledge and information from a trade book to make predictions about the book's plot.
- Students will evaluate the theme of a trade book.
Preview the Book
Display the book's cover and discuss the title and picture. Have students share initial ideas about why one could say that nothing is both better and worse than pumpkins. Flip through the book and have children predict what might happen.
Reading Lesson: Identifying Causes and Effects and Making Predictions
- Read the book to the point where the seeds blow over the town. Record children's predictions about what might happen next.
- Read the next two spreads and check predictions. Help students record in a simple cause and effect graphic organizer what just happened. For younger children, just note that the cause is that José and his brothers tossed the seeds and the effect is that the town becomes overgrown with pumpkins. For older children, trace the whole series of causes and effects: José's father wants only the best seeds SO José and his brother toss the other seeds SO those seeds blow into the town and grow everywhere.
- Read the rest of the book in this manner, stopping from time to time to collect predictions and then to check predictions and record causes and effects.
- For assessment, have children use examples of causes and effects from this book to discuss the idea of taking responsibility for your actions and the importance of thinking ahead about the effect your actions might have on other people and the environment.
Reading Lesson: Evaluate Theme
Fill in a two-column chart with examples of characters saying "nothing is worse than pumpkins" and "nothing is better than pumpkins." Compare and contrast these two views, discussing why the characters hold each view, and discuss whether one is more correct than the other, or whether both can, actually, be correct.
Extension Activities
- For an art activity, have students use clay and other materials to create a model of the town showing how it looks when covered with growing pumpkin plants.
- For a life science gardening activity, have students create a model town from potting soil, cardboard, and small planters. Then have them plant and grow grass seeds and make observations as grass grows over their town.
- For a social studies environmental lesson about the consequences of people's actions, discuss people's responsibility for the things they throw away, why it is important to think before tossing things out, and how the characters in this book could put the extra pumpkin seeds to better use.
- For a reading lesson to give students practice with making text-to-text connections, have them compare and contrast this book with The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle [Aladdin, 2001], Pumpkin Hill by Elizabeth Spurr [Holiday House, 2006], and Too Many Pumpkins by Linda White [Holiday House, 1996].
- To help students develop fine-motor skills, provide them with baskets of little pumpkins and challenge them to stack the pumpkins in high pyramids. Discuss whether they can replicate exactly the curling stack on the cover and if not, why not.
Reading about fictional causes and effects in a trade book can hone students' abilities to identify and predict causes and effects both in other texts and in their own lives.
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