How did you modify this unit for use in your own classroom?: In the Chinatown community that I work in, many times children have their first experience with books when they come to pre-k. Sharing stories and read alouds are a fantastic way to introduce the love of books as well as introduce them to the English language. We read the Gingerbread Man as a read aloud. The children loved how the Gingerbread Man came to life and ran away. To make the book come alive, we read the recipe and we made a list of things we needed in order to make our very own gingerbread man. We predicted whether or not our gingerbread man would run away. After decorating one of their own gingerbread men and baking them, they were able to eat their cookies, except for the one that I made, which got away. The Gingerbread Man ran in our classroom for 3 weeks. During these weeks we predicted where he might be hiding. We wrote letters back and forth asking questions of where he might be hiding. We set out traps inorder to catch him, made puppets and individual gingerbread houses. Children learned to read the repeated refrain "Run , run as fast as you can. You can't catch me I'm the Gingerbread Man" They were exposed to different types of writing such as lists, letter writing, recipes and dialogue. The book came to life for my class and I look forward to doing the same types of activities for other books. And for those who are wondering what happened to our Gingerbread Man, we caught him reading in our library. He's now stuffed and sits on our couch in the library.

List your primary instructional objectives for your students.

What role did technology play in this curriculum unit?: Children drew a gingerbread man and a house using Kid Pix. We also used the web site Starfall.com to creat a gingerbread man using different shapes and colors.

How did you assess and evaluate student performance?: My assessment of a child was based on if they were able to retell parts of the story, create a gingerbread man, and predict where the gingerbread man might have run to in the classroom.

Please tell us briefly about your background & teaching experience: Ms. Gong has been teaching at P.S. 124 for 12 years. She spent her first 9 years teaching Kindergarten and the past 3 years teaching pre-k.

What are your recommendations for other teachers interested in adapting this unit?: To add to the unit, you can sew a smaller version of the Gingerbread Man. Each child can take turns taking him home and drawing a picture of what they did with him that night. My class did this last year and they loved it.

Samples of Student Projects

	Gingerbread Cookie
	Gingerbread House
	Gingerbread Puppet,Drawing of Gingerbread Man
	Gingerbread Man At The Library