Gingerbread Man Unit

The Gingerbread Man unit was one of the my favorite ones to teach! There are so many ideas and materials which can be printed or used as inspiration. First, I wanted to create the Gingerbread Man atmosphere in the classroom, so I made the bulletin board for the play area:

You can see the Gingerbread Man doll I sewed for the kids to play pretend with. On the left side of the bulletin board are recipe cards for making gingerbread cookies. My students really enjoyed baking them pretend in the play kitchen. 

Story sequencing skills were a major focus of this unit. We practiced retelling the Gingerbread story at circle time using visuals and puppets, in small groups using the WH-question flip book, and during unstructured play time using puppets and pretend play.  At the end of the unit, students completed a sequencing project which required them to cut out sequencing cards, glue them in order of occurrence and color them.

Another activity which students enjoyed tremendously was the Where is Gingerbread Man? Power Point. I put this together by taking photos of my classroom and pasting a clip-art image of the Gingerbread Man in different locations throughout the classroom. This served as an opportunity to practice prepositions! Everyone's favorite slide was the silliest one of the Gingerbread Man on the potty  :-)

Data, data, data, I cannot make bricks without clay

It's progress report time again! How do you take data?

Sometimes it seems that there are nearly as many ways to take data as there are teachers. I have settled on a system that works for me. Each area of my classroom has data collection sheets on clipboards with my students' goals and objectives listed on them. I like to organize the goals by activity, so if a student has social/emotional goals like conflict resolution skills, data is most likely to be collected during leisure/recess time, not during daily living activities (there are always exceptions to the rule however). This system allows me to take data on any student during a particular activity.
When a student completes the task exactly as it is written in the objective, we mark it with a plus, if not then with a minus. My EAs understand that when the objective requires students to complete the task independently, it means that he or she must perform the task without any prompts (initial cues don't count as prompts). When prompts are used, we record it by writing a G for gestural prompt, V for verbal prompt, P for partial physical, and F for full physical prompt. This detailed data helps me assess student progress and adjust the program.

Some teachers create individual data sheets for each student and take data on 2-3 individual students per day. I find that my system works for me because there are less papers to keep track of and manage and none of the students get "forgotten". What works for you?

Whole Body Listening stategies

Last year my district sent me and other Early Childhood Education teachers to the Social Thinking Conference. It was a great experience, I learned a lot and acquired some goodies! One of them was this Whole Body Listening poster. It is posted in my classroom and I often refer to it in order to remind students of behavior expectation at circle.
We go over all of the "body parts" during the first weeks of school and talk about what it looks like to have "looking eyes" or "thinking brain". Since many of my students struggle with receptive communication skills, I try to use as many visuals as possible. We look at photos of people and talk about their body position, their gaze, etc. We also play a game where I look at something or someone and ask the kids to tell me who or what I am "thinking" about.

At the end of circle time, I ask one of my Educational Assistants to tell me who they think demonstrated best whole body listening skills. As a reward the child gets to pick out a song, or depending on the month, yoga poses, or animal moves which we do as a group.I got this idea from one of the Tasks Galore books.

Song menu

Morning greeting activities

How do you start your circle time routine?
I have used "get-to-know-me" songs like: "My name is Ms. Dina, Ms. Dina, Ms. Dina, my name is Ms. Dina, and who are you?"
Last year, students had laminated cards with their photos (with Velcro on the back) on their seats when they came to circle and when they saw their name displayed, they would come up and stick their name under it.
During the snowman unit, I had each student draw a part of the snowman as I called their names.
This year, I have been using Questions of the Day as a greeting activity. Kids "vote" for the answer using their name cards.