Punxsutawney Phyllis (Activities and Resources)

I don’t know about you, but Groundhog Day always seems to sneak up on me each year. It has something to do with arriving so early in February and competing with so many other holidays early in the year. I tend to read several stories aloud to build schema about groundhogs and the holiday, but then we focus in on one story, Punxsutawney Phyllis (also called Wake Up, Groundhog).

If you aren’t familiar with the story, here’s a summary:

I’ve included some comprehension activities that can easily be added to my student’s reading response journals. These comprehension spinners are a half page each and can be used with the other groundhog books I read throughout the week. They also get the students warmed up for writing their story summaries.

My students love to make crafts to go with their writing. If you read other groundhog stories, you can let your students create their own groundhog character and write a short story. Since Groundhog Day is on a Thursday this year, you could also track the weather all week and have students write a weather report for an informational writing option.

I know most classrooms have students predict whether the groundhog will see his shadow. I like to take that one step further and incorporate some graphing activities in the classroom that can be used as fast finisher activities. There are two spin, tally, and graph options included. The first is whether the groundhog will see his shadow (yes/no). The other is graphing the weather:

Since students will be getting different results, you can have the students write 2-3 statements or questions on the back about their data. (ex. Rain was seen more than any other weather. How many more votes for yes than no?)

You can find all of these activities and more here: