Fall is the perfect time to integrate science and language skills into one lesson. Build on background knowledge with this pumpkin compare and contrast lesson. All you need is an orange pumpkin, a white pumpkin…. no prep!!
To begin, we talked about how a white pumpkin and an orange pumpkin are similar and different. Some of my students needed visuals to choose from. We used visuals for colors, bumpy, smooth, stem, pumpkin, etc. With the visuals, students were able to say that the pumpkins were different colors, but both had stems.
Next, we worked on making predictions about what we would find inside. Everyone in my class had carved a pumpkin before so we talked about that first to activate background knowledge. Then, we began making our predictions. We were split… half of the group thought the white pumpkin would look just like the orange pumpkin inside while the other half of the group thought they would look different inside. To reduce wait time, we made the predictions while I was cutting through the pumpkins. Leave the tops on until everyone has made a prediction!
To build the suspense and language opportunities, we took off the orange pumpkin top first. We talked about what saw. Here are some examples of our observations:
