In December, SAS English as a New Language (ENL) classes celebrated gingerbread people with stories, crafts, and taste-testing.
With assistance from their teachers, Alison Roper and Michelle Rodstrom, students read numerous stories, made text-to-text connections, discussed story elements (characters, setting, problem, solution), and followed a recipe to make gingerbread ornaments for their families.
“They learned to make predictions based on other books and had so many wonderful discussions over these stories,” said Roper. “We also used Venn Diagrams to compare stories.”
Students read “The Gingerbread Man,” “The Gingerbread Baby” by Jan Brett, “The Gingerbread Friends” by Jan Brett, “The Gingerbread Boy” by Paul Galdone, “The Gingerbread Pirates” by Kristin Kladstrup, “The Gingerbread Man Loose at Christmas” by Laura Murray, “The Gingerbread Girl” by Lisa Campbell, and “The Gingerbread Mouse” by Katy Bratu.
Since many had never tried gingerbread before, the young bilingual scholars added to the magic by tasting the classic winter cookie themselves for the first time.
As the gingerbread limbs soaked up milk, students were able to understand the stories they read even better, the teachers explained.
“They were even making connections to eating the cookies and the feet getting wet to one of the books we read,” Roper said.
“It was truly a wonderful month of gingerbread and learning together and one that I hope they will always remember.”
