Gingerbread, Gingerbread

During Shared Reading this week, we have been focusing on a the classic story The Gingerbread Man.  The students have enjoyed revisiting this old favourite, and have been focusing on the characters in the story.

Our big book version is a retelling of The Gingerbread Man, written by Brenda Parkes and Judith Smith.

We also read another version of the same story, Gingerbread Baby by Jan Brett (this book is available at the Windsor Public Library for you to check out with your child).

After working with both stories this week, the students compared the characters featured in both stories.  We used a Venn diagram to help us organize our information.  A Venn diagram is a set of circles (we used two) that overlap.  Each book was represented by a circle, and any characters that were found in both stories were placed in the overlapping part of the circles.

The students used yarn to make the Venn diagram, and then worked collaboratively to organize all the characters from both stories.

Here is our completed Venn diagram:

After we were done, we took the Venn diagram apart, and left it on the front shelf.  The students enjoyed the activity so much that several students chose to work together to reconstruct the Venn diagram again later in the day.  

Try this at home with your child.  You can use a Venn diagram to compare books, movies, or even each other.  Can you and your child create a Venn diagram?  If you get a chance to try it, please send it in to school so your child can share it with the class.