Gingerbread Man ELA 5 Day Lesson Plan

Hi-Ho, everybody!

Well, I had to look a few times, but I kept getting the same results...

Today is only Tuesday. 

I was SO wishing it may have been Thursday. It feels like a Thursday.

Oh, Calgon. Take me away! 

Luckily, there are many, many, many activities to teach during this time of year.

This week is our Gingerbread week and the kids are loving it.

There are so many gingerbread books to read and compare. With each read, the level of excitement rises. It has been fun, but "WOAH" these kiddos are fired up!

As my students are becoming "close" readers this year, I have decided to dig deep into one of our gingerbread stories, The Gingerbread Man. (had to go with the original)

As I mentioned in the last post, this is a 5 day lesson plan format using the same text. Each day, we spend about 20-30 minutes digging deep into the story.

The routine goes a little something like this:

 Monday - Read for Enjoyment

Tuesday - Analyze the text for Vocabulary Words

Wednesday - Text Coding

Thursday - Use the text for Writing Response

Friday - Use the text for Fluency Drill

*Remember - Questions, responses, and activities are all planned around using the text. Everything goes back to the text. Basically, forcing the kids to go back into the text.

Feel free to use this and let me know how it works out for you.

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Tomorrow is kind of a big day, it's 12/12/12!

In honor of such a cool event, Stacy over at Simpson's Superstars is hosting a 12 on 12th Linky Party. Those interested in joining the party will be posting 12 random pictures from the 12th day of the month. Pretty easy and fun!

Click on the link to join Stacy's party tomorrow.

Have a THRILLING 12/12/12!

Gingerbread Week Day 4

Must ... write ... Day 4 .... post!

Cannot fall asleep until this is complete.

Boy, today was a long one! I worked late, then I rushed home to pick up the man and head on over to the in-laws for dinner. Three hours and a while later, I am finally home. Man, I'm exhausted.

Today was a fun day. We did the "Which part of the gingerbread cookie did you eat?" Math lesson. I'm sure you've heard of it. The kids take one bite of their gingerbread cookie and we record where they took that bite {head, tummy, arm, & leg.} First, we make a picture graph to display their information. We analyze the data. The kids complete their own bar graphs. Afterwards, I had them help me take the pictures from the first graph and turn it into a Pie Graph. They enjoyed helping make this graph (very attentive.) Then, everyone writes sentences to describe their data. Easy - peasy - lemon squeezy!

In the afternoon, I gave the kids another gingerbread man cookie to enjoy. We discussed adjectives to describe the gingerbread man cookie and added them to our large gingerbread man. Then, I let the kids choose their favorite seven adjectives and add them to their own gingerbread man bubble map.

Today was our last day for our Gingerbread Man comparison lesson. We read the story, The Gingerbread Cowboy. They loved this one, too! There is something magical about desert regions to first graders. I don't know why, but every year my kids get soooo into learning about deserts.

We recorded and posted the last bits of information to our large Gingerbread Story Anchor chart and completed the last story response sheet.

I still have at least three other gingerbread men stories to read tomorrow: The Gingerbread Pirates, Bad Boys Get Cookie, and The Gingerbread Friends. However, I'll just read those aloud for enjoyment, not work! They've been working super hard all week.

As I was tidying up the room at the end of the day, I noticed I had a small problem ...

I'm running out of places to hang up my student work!

I had to hang today's work on our library bookshelves. Hopefully, no one needs to shop for new books tomorrow!

I did get some really good news at the end of the school day. The "no pajamas" declaration for our Polar Express Day was overturned. My kids were so thrilled {me, too!} I could have kissed my computer when I read that email! :)

Let's hope for smooth sailing tomorrow. Either that or everyone is taking a long nap {including me!}

Gingerbread Week Day 3

Yay, I made it over the hump!

I'd love to report that I only have two more days until Christmas break, but then I'd be a darn liar! That's right, we have school until December 22. I've got to say, for this year, I am so thankful for blogs and Pinterest. I have MORE than enough ideas for lessons and craftivities to last me through this week, next, and even the week after that!

However, I'll take the break. I'm ready for it right now!

Well, I did have another observation again today, but this one was only 20 minutes long and it was first thing in the morning. I didn't lose any time from my regular schedule.

I can't imagine what it must be like to be a new teacher nowadays. This year, I have walkthroughs and observations all of the time. During my first few years teaching, I only remember being visited by the principal when it was time for my formal observations {that was 3 times a year.} And that was it! No one else would ever walkthrough, observe, or even visit. I think I would have lost my cookies, if I was observed back then as much as I am now! We are so used to people watching us. We could hold class outside in the middle of a busy parking lot. I am not sure if that is good or bad?!?! Whatever it is, these kids are always being watched.

Anywhoo, back to the topic at hand, Gingerbread Week Day 3.

Today, we read the Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett. I love this book! Jan Brett is so talented and creative. The kids really enjoyed this story, too. They liked the ending the best.

We recorded the characters, refrain, and ending onto our giant Anchor Chart and completed a response sheet.

Sorry the picture quality isn't that great. The lighting is so crappy.
At least I remembered to move the red garland today!

Then, during our 3 rotations of Daily 5 students who were either 'reading to self' or 'reading to someone' could use this cute gingerbread house and character sticks to act out the story. They loved it.

If you use any of Jan Brett's books, you've gotta check out her website. She has many activities to go along with her books. She even has videos to show kids how to draw some of her characters! 

Click {here} to go to her website.

There's even an interactive gingerbread house that the kids can decorate by dragging the candies onto house. So cute!

Alright, confession time.

I was scared that my gingerbread cookies would stink and there wouldn't be enough for my two lessons, so I went to Walgreens and picked up some Pepperidge Farms Gingerbread cookies. {NOT, what I wanted to serve to my class.}

Then, when I came home, I baked the gingerbread cookies from the mix. Surprisingly, I managed to have plenty of cookies and they didn't taste awful either!

I had Scott do the official taste test. I'm going to use his bite with our class data! :)

So, I guess I'll keep the Pepperidge Farms ones for the house. I know one person who won't mind having more cookies in the house at all!!!

Happy Wednesday!

Gingerbread Week Day 2

First off, today was NOT as productive as yesterday. I had 45 minutes taken away from my regular day for a Fundations observation. That 45 minutes pretty much ate up almost all of my time for any good Gingerbread activities.

Oh well, tomorrow's another day. 

All we did accomplish was to read the Gingerbread Boy, Gingerbread Girl, compare the two stories using a venn diagram, and complete a response sheet.

The overall response I got from most of them was that the Gingerbread Boy was predictable. Ha! They didn't get into it as much as they did with the traditional story yesterday. To each his own. 

Completely different reaction with the Gingerbread Girl. They LOVED it! The girls wanted me to sing her refrain over and over again. I thought that was pretty cool. I was getting myself prepared for a revolt after the Gingerbread Boy.

Then we completed the story chart on our big Gingerbread House Anchor Chart.

Try to ignore the red garland in the way! Oops :{

I ended my day with an hour long meeting and an e-mail stating that we can't wear our pj's for our Polar Express Day. I was crushed, devastated, and disappointed.  That's my favorite day of the year! I guess I'll let them take their shoes off instead. I'm not sure the kids will be allowed to board the Polar Express if they aren't in their pjs. Oh, well.

Tonight, I went out to Target to pick up the Gingerbread cookies for our science project and for the great bite taking day. Guess What??

They didn't have any Gingerbread Man cookies!!!

Yikes! So, I picked up one lonely bag of gingerbread cookie mix. Now, I've got some baking to do! Oh, my poor kids. You can't screw up the mix, right?

Check out what else I got at Target:

It's a Gingerbread Man headband! 

Hahahaha! I could not pass it up. The kids will probably think I've lost my mind.

Let's hope we have a better day tomorrow. :)

Gingerbread Week Day 1

It's Gingerbread Week in our classroom, yippee!

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of extra time to do bunches and bunches of gingerbread lessons and cute craftivities. We aren't doing an anthology story this week, so I can use that time. For anything else, I'm trying to integrate the best I can.

For instance, we integrated gingerbread into our math lesson today. We've been working on fact families, so I figured we could make gingerbread houses with fact families written on them. I lucked out and noticed that Mrs. Hodson from Today in First Grade ... had a great fact family house freebie! One less thing to do for me. Gotta love that!

I copied her house onto brown construction paper. It was a lighter shade of brown and they looked fabulous. Next, I knew I wanted to add candies to the houses, but I hadn't made up my mind on how we would do it. So, I decided to check out Jan Brett's website because I knew it is full of great pictures and ideas.

Lo and behold, I found exactly what I wanted. Not only did she have candies for our houses, but she also had these super adorable gingerbread friends!

Click {here} to go to the Jan Brett Gingerbread Friends page.

Here's how our Gingerbread Village turned out. I had one little cutie still out sick so you'll notice a spot left for her.

The kids were so proud of themselves! {me too!}

Later in the afternoon, we read the Gingerbread Man. I asked if anyone remembered the story of the Gingerbread Man. They told me what they remembered {which was pretty good} and we went over the GIANT Anchor Chart we were going to complete as we read the different gingerbread stories this week. Got this from Deanna Jump's Gingerbread Unit. It's super cute, go get it now!

I reminded them that as I read the story they had a job to do. They needed to recall the characters, refrain, and ending of the story so we could put it on the chart. I read the story to them and they loved it, of course.

The kids gave me the answers for the anchor chart and I added them on.

Afterwards, I read Deanna Jump's Gingerbread story to the class. It is short and sweet and the kids loved the rhyming. Then, I showed them our big ole pocket chart with the same story all mixed up. We worked on ways to put the story back in order. They SO wanted to look at the book to help them figure it out. I told them we would look at the book after we tried to sequence it on our own. They didn't like that answer, ha!

Alas, they did it {without the book!}

One of my kids asked me to take a picture of it. I guess they are really used to me taking pictures of them by now. They want to document everything!

Here you go, buddy!

Can't wait for Day 2 fun tomorrow!