Posts tagged ‘cooperation’
132. The First Thanksgiving by Jean Craighead George
Retell: The story of the first Thanksgiving which addresses some former misconceptions.
Topics: Thanksgiving, Cape Cod, Plymouth Rock, Pawtuxets, slavery, Squanto, Puritans, Mayflower, survival, death, cooperation, farming
Units of Study: Nonfiction, Content-Area, Social Issues
Tribes: personal best, mutual respect
Reading Skills: monitoring for sense, envisionment, determining importance, synthesis
My Thoughts: When I was a kid, I learned about how the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. They toiled through the winter and many people died. I learned how Squanto helped the Pilgrims plant corn, beans and squash and as a gesture of peace, the Native Americans and the Pilgrims sat together to celebrate the harvest. What I didn’t learn until I read Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen is how Squanto came to learn English–he had been a slave in London. Several years before the Pilgrims arrival, Squanto had been tricked onto a boat headed for Spain. He was purchased by a merchant ship owner from London. Squanto eventually sailed back to the village that he had been stolen from only to find that his entire village had died from smallpox!
This book attempts to tell the story of the first Thanksgiving without glossing over the contributions of the Wampanoag and of Squanto. I plan on reading this during the few days leading up to the Thanksgiving holiday. I also think I want to reread it during our Social Issues unit.
127. The War Between the Vowels and the Consonants by Priscilla Turner
Retell: The snooty vowels and the rough and tumble consonants have never gotten along with each other. After a few letters begin to fight with each other, war breaks out between the vowels and the consonants. When chaos, in the form of squiggly lines, rolls into town the vowels and consonants must work together to defeat it.
Topics: letters, vowels, consonants, war, cooperation, fighting, cliques, power
Units of Study: Talking and Writing About Texts
Tribes: appreciations/no put-downs
Habits of Mind: thinking interdependently
Reading Skills: interpretation
My Thoughts: When I previewed this text I assumed I was going to learn about how vowel sounds are really strong and influence other vowel sounds. In reality this book is not really about letters at all–it’s about class and cooperation between the classes. The vowels represent the upper class–there are few of them and they are snooty. The consonants represent the lower-middle class– the undignified commoners. They distrust each other, go to war and then eventually must learn how to work together. I can see reading this in my class in order to have a discussion about cliques within the class and within the grade. It could be read again when we study industrialization and analyze the struggles between the rich and the poor.
Teachable Texts 