Super Teacher Moment 1

I apologize for taking so long to get this up, but I had a 3 week old with a cold this week.  Needless to say, sleep has been elusive! 
This past year I was very excited about my pizza lesson.  Teaching a half day kindergarten can make it tough to get everything in, so I am always looking for ways to integrate and this lesson allowed me to do just that and boy was it fun!  We were reading a theme about food in language arts and finishing our science unit about the five senses.  I decided to read the book called "Hold the Anchovies" which is part of our program and focuses on asking questions before reading a nonfiction text.  We asked questions about how pizza was made before we read and found the answers in the book.  For the questions the book did not answer, we did further research on the Internet.  I then had my students make mini bagel pizzas.  Each child put one teaspoon of sauce on half a small bagel, added two teaspoons of cheese and if they wished topped their pizza with one pepperoni.  I then broiled the pizzas in my toaster oven for about 3 minutes.  Before eating, we talked about what the pizza smelled like, looked like and felt like.  After eating, we described what it tasted like.  Finally, we talked about how we could remember how to make the pizzas again.  (I am always on the look out for realistic writing activities.)  As a class, we completed a shared writing of the recipe being sure we included each step and a title.  When we were complete, I typed up the recipe and sent it home with each child.  While it did  cost me $23 to make one mini pizza for each of my 43 students, it was well worth it and the kids talked about it for days!  The number of skills we worked on and the lasting impact they had was quite evident and exciting to watch.  Many parents and students told me that they made the pizzas at home and that the kindergartners helped read their recipes (while most of it was most likely memory, it reinforced the importance of writing) as they made dinner with their parents.  What a rewarding lesson!