Green Eggs and Ham
Age Range: 5 to 11
When Sam-I-am persists in pestering a grumpy grouch to eat a plate of green eggs and ham, perseverance wins the day, teaching us all that we cannot know what we like until we have tried it!
Teaching Ideas and Resources:
- The sentences in the story are all written in the first person. Can you rewrite them in the third person?
- The story consists of lots of speech. Can you rewrite it using speech marks in the correct places?
Could you turn the story into a playscript?
- There are only fifty different words in the story. Can you write a story using a limited number of words?
- How many different types of punctuation are there in the story. Can you explain why they have been used?
- Make a persuasive poster / advert to encourage people to eat green eggs and ham.
- Sort all of the words in the story into groups to show which ones rhyme with each other.
- Think of words that describe food items that you do like and ones that you do not. Can you think of lots of synonyms for these?
- Retell the story from the point of view of Sam-I-Am. Why did he want to persuade the grumpy grouch to try the green eggs and ham? How did he feel throughout the story?
- Make a rhyme about some food that you do (or do not) like to eat.
- Watch this video showing a reading of the story. Could you try to record your own version?
- There are fifty different words in the story. Can you find and count them all?
- This story was first published in 1960. Can you work out how many years ago this was?
- Can you plan a meal that grumpy grouch might like to each instead of green eggs and ham?
- Download the Green Eggs and Ham app and let your children read the book and record their own version of the story.
- Make a multimedia version of the story with images, animation and audio. Could you use Powerpoint (or a similar program) to make something like this...?
- Are eggs normally green? Can you create some pictures of different food items that are unusual colours?
- Watch the animated version of the story. Can you make your own short animation to show part of it?
- Can you find out different translations for the words in the title?
- Does this story have a moral? Can you think of other stories that try to teach us a moral? Could you try to write your own?