Posts tagged ‘fossils’
130. Planet Earth/Inside Out by Gail Gibbons
Retell: Gail Gibbons imagines what we would see if we looked inside the earth.
Topics: earth, gravity, ocean, Pangaea, equator, continents, earth model, fossils, plates, earthquakes, volcanoes, islands
Units of Study: Nonfiction, Content-Area
Reading Skills: monitoring for sense, envisionment, determining importance, synthesis
My Thoughts: We are wrapping up our Science unit on Earth Movements this Friday and I was looking for a text to end with. This book ties in a lot of subjects within this unit: the earth model, Pangaea, plate tectonics, faults, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc. The illustrations, which contain clear and useful diagrams, help readers comprehend the text. However, in some parts, readers most add to the illustrations with details from their own mental picture and think about what is not in the illustrations.
95. If You Are a Hunter of Fossils by Byrd Baylor
Retell: As a child goes hunting for fossils in the Southwest she envisions what the dry world once looked like underwater.
Topics: fossils, trilobites, dinosaurs, ocean, landforms
Units of Study: Nonfiction, Content-Area
Habits of Mind: responding with wonderment and awe, striving for accuracy and precision
Reading Skills: envisionment, questioning
Writing Skills: using repetition
My Thoughts: One of the many goals of this blog is to discover hidden read aloud gems. This is one of those books and it just happens to fit with our current Science unit. I love how the author invites the reader to envision what the world must have been like when today’s mountains were covered by a vast ocean. This book could also make a good mentor text for students who need help using repetition effectively. If you decide to have students read and write nonfiction poetry, this book would be a good addition to that unit.
Teachable Texts 