Posts tagged ‘gathering data through all senses’
122. Welcome to the Green House by Jane Yolen
Retell: Jane Yolen poetically compares the rainforest to a green house.
Topics: rainforest, animals, birds, nonfiction poetry
Units of Study: Nonfiction, Content-Area, Personal Essay
Habits of Mind: gathering data through all senses
Reading Skills: envisionment, inference
Writing Skills: using repetition, incorporating rhythm and rhyme, using sparkling vocabulary, using alliteration
My Thoughts: A few months ago I received a GrowLab through a DonorsChoose grant. We received support from an educator at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens and created corsage box terrariums. Students planted cuttings from three different plants that thrive in the rainforest. I plan on reading this book soon to support our gardening experience. The text in this book is so vivid that as I read it I can actually feel the humidity of the rainforest. It’s a great text for teaching students how to interpret metaphors. At the end of the book, the author writes a message to her readers encouraging us to find out more about saving the rapidly disappearing rainforest. Though it’s not technically a personal essay, you could use sections of the message as a mentor text.
117. Alfred Nobel: The Man Behind the Peace Prize by Kathy-Jo Wargin
Topics: Alfred Nobel, Nobel Peace Prize, nitroglycerin, death, literature, art, dynamite, peace, legacy
Units of Study: Nonfiction, Content-Area
Habits of Mind: persisting, gathering data through all senses, striving for accuracy and precision, questioning and posing problems, applying past knowledge to new situations
Reading Skills: prediction, synthesis, determining importance, interpretation, empathy
My Thoughts: With the announcement of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Barack Obama, you may want to take the opportunity to discuss the history of the prize itself. It’s a great text for discussing the Habits of Mind. The illustrations are quite large and are particularly vivid–perfect for classroom read alouds.
Teachable Texts 