Pancake Tuesday is upon us and talk of pancakes and pancake making will be a feature in many classrooms this week.
With a playful topic such as pancakes, comes many valuable opportunities to extend the learning! Even if you aren't planning on making pancakes with the children, there are still lots of literacy learning opportunities which can be connected to the theme of pancakes - taking you well beyond Pancake Tuesday itself!
Here are a few playful lesson ideas:
Writing:
Procedural writing and pancakes are the usual 'go to' but what about some poetry writing?
Writing acrostic pancake poems
Writing poems about pancakes and incorporating the senses
Being a multisyllabic word, pancakes is an ideal entry point into writing cinquain poems - which play on syllabic awareness! Follow the cinquain pattern and write a clever poem about pancakes.
You can find templates for these and more, in my free Pancake Poetry Writing Templates:
Why not capitalize on the theme of pancakes to inspire some playful Narrative Writing? A great pancake disaster! A pancake space odyssey! Endless opportunities.
Find lots of open-ended pancake themed narrative writing invitations here:
Reading:
As always, wordless picturebooks offer endless opportunities for 'reading pictures' -practising observation, critical thinking, inferencing, writing creatively, etc., etc! Why not explore the text together and create your own text to accompany the illustrations? If you don't have a copy of the text to hand, use this YouTube read aloud, mute the reader and pause to explore and discuss the illustrations.
Oral Language:
Why not perfect some pancake Tongue Twisters? A playful way to get those brain, mouth and tongue muscles going!
Here are some to get you started:
When you have mastered those, why not invite the children to compose their own pancake tongue twisters in pairs or small groups?
Have fun!