Pigs Will Be Pigs

Title: Pigs Will be Pigs

Author & Illustrator: Amy Axelrod & Sharon McGinley-Nalley

Recommended Grade Levels: K-3

Common Core Standards Addressed:

-Reasoning Abstractly and Quantitatively:

            -Provides context of “hunting for money” and needing money to buy food/ use the provided menu from which students can abstract how to count money, use addition and subtraction

            -Can pause throughout the story to ask how much money has been collected in total, how much each Pig family member has collected, or pairs (How much have the parents collected, how much have all of the piglets collected, what’s the difference between the two, etc)

-Constructing Viable Arguments and Critiquing the Arguments of others:

            -Use the menu page to ask students to come up with different meals the pigs can buy. Students can make the case for the meal they come up with

-Model with Mathematics:

            -By counting how much money has been collected along with the prices on the menu page, knowing what can and cannot be afforded by the pig family can be modeled with addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problems.

-Appropriate Tools Used:

            -Tools that can be used: Pencil/paper, whiteboard/marker, play money, play food items, other representative manipulatives

-Look for and Express Regularity in Repeated Reasoning:

            -Students can recognize patterns in money such as four quarters = one dollar, and other such recognizable combinations.

Summary:

A family of pigs are hungry. However, they’ve already finished all of the food at home. They need to go out for dinner but no one went to the bank or has any money! Join the Pig family as they search their home for money- finding some dollars here and some change there. Keep track of how much they have as they find more money. Will they have enough for dinner? Check out the full menu of the restaurant to find out.

Rating: *****

This is a fun and wonderful book for teaching your elementary students math and money! It’s engaging and the inclusion of a full priced-out menu is perfect for finding numerous different and creative ways the Pig Family can spend their money. This is excellent for creating lessons for various grade levels, as it can cover counting, adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing.

Classroom Ideas:

-Have students keep track of how much money the pig family finds. Teacher/aide/student volunteer can write down the amounts on a white board.

            -Model the pigs finding the money by using tangible play-money. Have students gather what’s being found in real time.

-Break down the amount of money they’ve found: How many dollars’ worth of quarters? How many dollars’ worth of nickels? Etc.

-How much money did the Pig family spend on dinner? Do they have any change? If so, how much?

-Use the menu page to think of what else the pig family could have ordered. What if they wanted an appetizer or an extra dessert? Have students work in groups to come up with different meal combinations the Pig family could order given the money they had.

            -Make this a daily activity. What if instead of one big meal, they ordered something different each day. What did they get on Tuesday? How much money is left now?