Gingerbread Man Reading Activities

Delight your students with gingerbread man reading activities comparing favorite versions of The Gingerbread Man stories! This unique and creative unit has both printable and digital activities on Google Slides, and is designed to be non-holiday related so you can use it any time of year.

This large resource includes 2-3 weeks of detailed lesson plans, 9 reading and ELA lessons with reading comprehension activities, literacy centers, anchor charts, quizzes, and crafts.

Many of the activities are not book specific and can be used with any gingerbread books you have available. The book specific activities use these books:

• The Gingerbread Man (any version)
• The Gingerbread Girl
• The Gingerbread Cowboy
• The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School

Don’t have gingerbread man books? Don’t worry! I’ve included a clickable guide with video links to 15 versions read aloud on YouTube. Many of the activities are not book specific and can be used with any gingerbread books you have available.

The 9-lesson teaching PowerPoint introduces comprehension mini lessons with meaningful response activities and interactive anchor charts for whole group lessons. Carefully aligned to Grades 1-3 addressing multiple RL, language arts, and writing standards, I’ve even included math integration in a bonus gingerbread graphing project. Your students will love the gingerbread house unit folder to keep them organized as they learn. Planning for December has never been easier!

12 Digital Activities on Google Slides

Included is a PDF with a links menu to the comprehension lessons on Google Slides and 12 different digital reading activities. Directions are included for how to copy the activities to your own Google Drive and assign them to students in Google Classroom.

What’s Inside:

9-Lesson Teaching Power Point with 40 slides + Google Slides version

Lesson Topics:

Determining the Central Message

Comparing Story Elements

Identifying Literal & Non-Literal Language

Inferring Character traits

Making Text Connections

Using Illustrations to Learn More

Comparing How Characters Respond to Challenges

Why Do Author’s Use Repetition?

Writing a Fractured Fairy Tale-What if the Fox Was the Cookie?

Students rewrite the fairy tale from the fox’s point of view.

Additional Activities:

• 3 Interactive anchor charts & chart parts
• 8 Graphic Organizers
• Comparing Story Elements charts and student booklet version with cover
• Quick check quizzes/exit tickets
• Reading response flapbooks
• Lesson posters

Print & Digital Literacy Centers & Games:

• Types of Nouns-Common, proper, collective nouns
• Punctuating Sentences
• Short and Long /ea/
• Book Talk-Comparing Story Elements-buddy reading spinner and discussion cards
• Following Multi-Step Directions-How to Make a Gingerbread Cookie
• Gingerbread Jog- Roam the room task cards for multiple skills practice of compound words, plural nouns, contractions, spelling, and grammar

Writing Activities:

• Narrative Writing: What If The Fox Was A Cookie? Writing a fractured fairy tale
• Opinion Writing: Is the Gingerbread Girl a Smart Cookie or a Tough Cookie?
• Expository How-To Writing: The Gingerbread Man Escape Prevention Manual
• With individual and class book formats

Crafts:

• Central Message/Retelling Craft (print & digital)
• Gingerbread Man Loose in the School character craft and missing poster (print & digital)
• The Matzah Man character traits writing craft
• Candy Cane Cactus Ornament
• Gingerbread House Unit Folder

Math Graphing Project & Cookie Decorating for Data

• Gingerbread Man Glyph Craft that can also be done with real gingerbread man cookies
• Glyph Key, Class Graph anchor chart & chart parts
• printable graphing pages for bar graph, tally table, and pictograph
• Graph Chat discussion cards to solve addition, subtraction, and comparing problems related to the class graph.

This large unit is loaded with resources, please download the preview for pictures of everything included.