Earth and Sky

Today we started to talk about the earth and the sky.  Over the next 6 to 8 weeks we are going to be looking at how Native Americans told stories about the earth and the sky.  At the same time we are going to study the first groups of Native Americans that came to Ohio.  To kick off the unit I decided to show a video showing the beauty of earth.

As the students watched the video they wrote down what they saw in their new reader's notebook.  We also watched a video showing the night sky at Yosemite.  I wanted students to think about how the earth and sky would have looked when Native Americans would have first come to North America and Ohio.

We also took time to glue an article about Native American storytelling into our reader's notebook.  Groups were then asked to read the article using VIP post-it notes.  VIP post-it notes are VERY IMPORTANT POST-IT NOTES and we use these VIP's to mark VERY IMPORTANT PARTS of a text.  This fits with our new thinking strategy of determining importance.  

To keep with the theme of the earth and the sky I started a new read aloud book today.

This book is one of my favorites.  It is written by the amazing Grace Lin (you should check out some of  her other books including Where the Mountain Meets the Moon).  I picked the book because the story it tells weaves in Chinese Folklore.  In the book the class will hear stories about why there is only one sun in the sky and why the sun and moon come out at different times of the day.  These stories will hopefully fit right in with the stories that we will be hearing from different Native American tribes. 

Hope you are all having a great week.