Bio-Poem and Four Square Poster Board: In a joint project with the fifth grade, the gansters heard about the life of a famous Jewish American from a fifth grade buddy, who had previously researched and written about this person. Working together, they wrote a “bio-poem” – a poem about the life of this person. Together they also decorated a poster, including the name of the individual, an artistic rendition of some aspect of the person’s life, and a map of the person’s world.

Million Dollar Baby: In its morning calendar routine, the Gan curriculum includes an element focusing on money and the value of coins. In social studies the Gan begins its study of economics with this concept. The Gan also learns about the concept of the passage of time by making personal timelines. These two concepts were combined for the Gan social studies project in 2004-2005.

Gan students looked for a penny minted in each year of their lives. Parents told their children a story about something important that happened to them in each of those years, and sent a note to school with these stories. Together, parents and children collected pictures matching these stories or representing the child in that year of his or her life. During center time, children read or were told these stories and then, using their own words and spelling, wrote about something that happened during each of those years. Their writing, photos and pennies were then used to create a personal timeline.

Corresponding Standards in HDS Gan Curriculum:

History:

• Describe personal past; construct personal time line
• Read simple biographies about the lives of others

Geography:

• Locate U.S. on a world map

Economics:

• Sort coins by size and numeric value

Inquiry:

• Pose questions and identify information from observation; organize and record these observations
• Communicate findings to others clearly
• Acquire information from multiple sources; communicate information clearly to others

Writing:

• Write for a variety of purposes, including to entertain, to describe, to inform and to predict
• Practice proper letter formation
• Reread own writing
• Write using inventive spelling; use conventional spelling for basic sight words
• Write from right to left, top to bottom and use spaces between words
• Share writing
• Introduced to proofreading of own writing; begin to self-correct spelling
• Recognize periods, question marks, and exclamation points; begin to use them in own writing
• Use correct punctuation, capitalization and other conventions