Thanksgiving at Rankin
by Kristen Goode
November 24, 2009
Our class has been learning different reading strategies to help move them to the next level of readers. One skill we've recently been working on is being able to see the elements of a story play out in our minds as we read or listen to a book. In luau of the upcoming holiday, we decided to practice this skill with a wonderful Thanksgiving story titled, Cranberry Thanksgiving written by Wende and Harry Devlin. This story takes place by the ocean on a Cranberry bog. A grandmother and granddaughter work hard to prepare a feast for Thanksgiving. Grandmother is famous for her Cranberry Bread, so much so, that she is forced to hide the recipe behind a brick in her fireplace. As the story unfolds, The Grandmother learns a valuable lesson about people, and the readers get to hear about all the tasty food that Grandmother prepares! At the end of the story, there is a recipe for the famous Cranberry bread. Our class had a wonderful time working together to follow the recipe and bake some of the famous bread. Students were encouraged to imagine and predict what the bread would look, smell, and taste like. We put our visualizing skills to work. After the bread was complete, we were able to compare the real thing to our imagination. We had a wonderful time working together. Also, to enforce some of our recently learned math skills, we created a pictograph to show who liked the bread and who didn't. The class was split in half with 8 loving it and 8 disliking it. Overall, it was a very fun and educational experience for our class.
