Last week The Most Awesome Kindergarten Teacher and The Most Awesome Librarian continued a collaboration project with The Most Awesome Kindergarten Class. We have been working on informational writing, specifically How-To stories. After the students wrote a story to teach me how to find a book in the library (thanks for the great idea Awesome Librarian), we decided to write a story teaching people how to make pancakes.
To begin our study, we read two books about making pancakes. One was Pancakes by Jan Pritchett, a book in our Rigby Literacy series. This was a great teaching tool because it is a wordless book so the students had to verbalize all parts of the story and couldn’t rely on the text.
The second book was Let’s Make Pancakes by Emma Rossi. This is a leveled reader also, one that I found in our school’s bookroom. This book had text to read and the steps were slightly different from the steps in the first book, so we were able to have a discussion to compare and contrast the two books, which added to the depth of literacy skills covered throughout the week.
After we studied both books, the students created their own ‘book’ by listing the pancake-making steps on separate pieces of paper, then reading through them and correcting the sequence of steps. They then matched pictures (Google Images and MS Word clip art are wonderful resources) to the steps to finish the pages.
As a culminating activity, The Most Awesome Teacher and Librarian used the students’ created directions to make pancakes—a true test to the accuracy of their work. We made it through an intruder drill and a tripped fuse in our power strip to make the pancakes during writing time.
Every student had a hand measuring ingredients so it was truly a class project. Take a look at these pictures to see our fun.
Ingredients
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 egg
- 3/4 cup milk
- 1/4 cup shortening, melted
Directions
- In a small bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Combine the egg, milk and shortening; stir into dry ingredients just until moistened.
- Pour batter by 1/4 cupful onto a greased hot griddle. Turn when bubbles form on top of pancakes; cook until the second side is golden brown.
