Elaborative Detail: Making a Gingerbread Man

Hey all of my kindergarten teachers out there! Here is a great way to adapt one of your EW lessons to fit any theme you are teaching in your classroom. This lesson is from Lesson 34: Elaborative Detail - Describing Teddy- and we adapted it to fit for The Gingerbread Man.  In this lesson the students will recognize that description is specific rather than general. (Show, Don’t Tell) They will help to describe each of the features of the gingerbread man we create and will take part in the MODELING process by answering detail generating questions  in words or phrases. Students then observe the teacher taking those words and phrases and MODELING an elaborative segment in paragraph form. The goal behind all of this is that they will begin to internalize the detail-generating questions and become comfortable with the language of elaboration, and, when ready, begin to elaborate in their own writing.

It was loads of fun and the vocabulary that those little guys came up with blew me away! I had to go back and brag about them to my 6th graders:) 

 We first began by building a gingerbread man together on the smart board. I really honed in on the fact that we start at the top of his head and work down to his feet, which is what we want our students to do when they began to write. Have you ever gave kindergarteners a pile of supplies and asked them to make something? It usually turns out like one big messy pile. However, by modeling in the interactive lesson the order in which we make the gingerbread man, we saw students mimicking our exact order once they were given the opportunity to make them on their own. It was so neat to see and hear them talking out loud about how to make it. 

This is their finished product that they were so proud of!

After we made the gingerbread man, I began asking productive questions to generate details that we could write into sentences. Again, I talked several times about where we started making our man and where we should start writing about him. The students picked up on it right away and were able to describe each of his features in the correct order without much prompting! I love the great vocabulary and word choice that they used with just a little questioning from me to get them to think of the right words to use! This is the completed modeled sample from my time that day in Mrs. Price's kindergarten class.

I am attaching the lesson template from google slides that we used to make the interactive gingerbread man as well as a modeling guide with a few tips and templates for you to use. Enjoy! Don't forget to share a few samples with us on my FB group Love to Write and Read All-Day!

Interactive Lesson

Teacher Modeling & Student Pages