Teaching Teamwork with Tops and Bottoms

Tops and Bottoms is a quick read that would work for grades k-5, but is best suited for grades k-3.  It does an awesome job demonstrating how teamwork and hard work are much more effective than laziness.  In the story the character Bear inherits property and wealth that he is way to lazy to take care of.  Down the street from Bear is a family of hares who got into a little trouble and have a hard time getting what they need to survive now.  So the father hare tricks Bear over and over again to feed his family.  At the end Bear wises up and starts to work his land and the Hare family no longer has access to food because they tricked Bear so many times.

If you have been following along to our Back To School series then you might have read the post "Say Hello" which showed how I introduce Think-Pair-Share to my classroom.  Now that students have been practicing and know how to work with a partner it's time to launch expectations and procedures for group work.  It's really nice reading a book before hand that demonstrates so clearly what benefits might come from teamwork.  After reading the book we fill in a Venn diagram as a class that explores the character's traits in the book.  Then I pose the question:  What would have been a plan that worked best for all of the characters?  After we have a class conversation I then pose the question, "What's the best way for everyone in our class to work together?" We fill out a Do's and Don't anchor chart that can stay up all year.  Once our anchor chart is filled out, students need a break and we move onto something else.  After the students have a break I will teach another lesson that requires group work and we will develop our procedures from our expectation chart. Then I will have the students work together in a group.  The lesson that we use for practicing group work really doesn't matter.  It's so nice to be able to teach standards, procedures and character education all in a 30 minute lesson.  Be sure to check out the video below and come back tomorrow for another post!