Making Connections Using the Three Billy Goats Gruff

Last week I had to teach a lesson using a fairy tale and I needed to focus on getting the students to make connections with it. I really wanted to use Janet Stevens version of The Three Billy Goats Gruff for the lesson because I like it so much. I decided to lead students to make connections with having brothers and sisters like the billy goats in the story, so I turned to Kim Adsit's Family Fun Math and Literacy Activities for a lesson idea. We used the brothers and sisters Venn diagram from the unit and the students LOVED it! Do not feel like you need to be teaching an entire unit on family to make the activities from this packet work. They work great for making family connections with other read alouds, units, and lessons.

First, we read the book and made connections throughout about having brothers and sisters and things we do with them. Partner share is great for this.
Next students wrote their name on a white strip of paper and returned to the carpet
Then we sorted ourselves into groups by who had brothers, who had sisters, and who had both.
Students who only had sisters were given a pink strip of construction paper to back their name on, students who only had brothers received a blue strip, and students who had both received both pink and blue.
Finally students came back to the carpet and we added their names to the Venn one at a time as they shared information about their brothers and sisters with the class. After we completed the Venn, we analyzed it by asking questions such as which group had the most, which group had the least, how many more, etc.

Here is our completed Venn. I would have rather have done it with names and pictures the way Kim did in her example, but since I was modeling a lesson for another teacher, I did not have access to pictures in time to get them ready.

Here is an example picture from Kim's blog. You can see how she used pictures with the student's names.