The Big Cheese

The Big Cheese is an activity that I try to do weekly. Each week a different student is the Big Cheese (I go in ABC order) and another student is the little cheese. This activity is great for vocabulary development and grammar. I use this instead of naming a star student.

I have my Big Cheese sit on a stool next to the easel. The little cheese sits on the floor next to them. We start by titling the paper; "The Big Cheese". I ask the kids how to spell the words, upper/lower case etc. Then we take turns asking the Big Cheese a question...

Student: "What is your favorite food?"

Big Cheese: "My favorite food is chicken." (I use this time to encourage them to use adjectives to describe the noun and we can go back and rephrase before the little cheese repeats.) "My favorite food is fried chicken."

The little cheese then changes the sentence to 3rd person and repeats it to the class

Little Cheese: "Kelsey's favorite food is chicken." (Then the class helps me write this sentence. They help me spell, punctuate etc.)

We read what we have written so far chorally and continue to ask questions. Sometimes I pick the kids or let the Big Cheese pick who can ask a question. When we are finished it looks like this...

The next day we get it back out, reread and search for nouns, verbs and adjectives. It would work for all parts of speech, those are the main ones we focus on. We circle nouns in yellow (we also identify proper and pronouns), verbs in orange and adjectives in pink. Like this...

Then the student is featured on the "Big Cheese" bulletin board outside our classroom for the week. They are able to take it home once I hang the next. The kids love it and it is a fun activity!

At the beginning of the year I invite people from around the school to participate, our Instructional Assistant, Principal, myself...so the kids get familiar with the activity and get to know new faces :)