Classroom Practice Unit

by Instructor, Carol S. Gossett

A critical element in this course is to put the research and guiding documents into practice in the classroom. The unit is intended to serve as a Sample Lesson Format for K-1 teachers to use with their students. Each teacher will need to make decisions as to which activities are appropriate for their students and which are not. The lessons are intended to be taught over and over. Children need repeated experiences with each lesson ‹ once through will not teach reading. Adaptations can be made to this unit by changing the character theme of the Gingerbread Man to other themes such as a snowman, another character from a favorite children's literature selection, etc. This unit is meant to be used as a format that can be transferred to other themes used by teachers in early childhood classrooms.

The Classroom Practice Unit contains over 100 pages of lesson plans and blackline masters for literacy centers, whole class lessons, home links, and curriculum connections. The unit is built around The Gingerbread Man theme and tied to several different versions of the story. Direct connections are made to Pat Cunningham's book, Classrooms That Work, They Can All Read and Write by noting where to access the background information and theory related to each student activitiy described in the unit.

The unit explores Shared and Group Reading, Reading/Thinking Skills, Graphic Organizers and Story Maps, QAR's (Question-Answer Relationships), Student Made Books, Shared and Group Writing, Writing/Thinking Skills, Studying the Characters of the Stories, Tracking the Setting and Plot, Sequence, Phonological Awareness, Vocabulary, Letter Recognition, Letters, Rhyming Families, Syllables, Adjectives, Synonyms and the Characters, Listening/Reading Transfer Lessons, Figurative Language, Drama, Home Links, Homework, Puppets, Art connections, and class Quilts!

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The Kindergarten Connection