Product Description
Using Fiction to Help Students Explore the Geography, History, and Cultures of the Seven U.S. Regions‹and Link Literature to Social Studies
All Aboard for a Tour of the U.S.‹With Great Literature as Your Guide!
Take your students on a learning-packed trip across the U.S. with books they¹ll love! This resource includes background information, activity ideas, reproducibles, and Internet connections to help you use 35 great novels as springboards to… More >>
#1 by C. Van Hook on May 27, 2010 - 7:39 am
C. VanHook…a media specialist, June 28, 2002,
Refreshing ideas to teach READING and GEOGRAPHY
What a great resource! I will take a ‘focus’ title from the resource and summarize the layout. Will Hobb’s is a favorite author of mine, thus BEARSTONE: –begins with brief summary –background is brief with helpful teaching strategies to hook students –bookpairing section is attractive and formatted nicely to grab attention, also encourages reading more titles by same author, a feature I like! –expansion activities: Learn about author and themes in book. Websites are listed with detail about sites and suggestions for learning activities using these websites –hands-on activities give six brief but concise activities to do in classroom : graphic organizer, mapping, create character conversations, archaeologist journaling, cook, writing activity–covers the scope of the curriculum nicely here. –ready to go graphic organizer (student activity page) is included. Consistently, through the hands-on activities, additional books are brought into picture as well as more websites. This is packing so many useful resources into the 112-page resource! Books with audio recording are noted. Many cultures are touched on. There are 15 books recommended per seven U.S. regions covered in the resource. The table of contents will direct you to the ‘beginning of each region’ page. This page has a nice regional map that features 5 of the 15 books as ‘focus’ books. The other ten title recommendations are noted at the bottom of that page. All books refer to the states that are set in the stories. The authors will keep an updated list of websites to support this resource at their official websites. That’s going ‘above and beyond’ and is greatly appreciated. The hands-on activities listed per ‘focus’ book are creative, innovative, exciting, and encourage students to think critically. Students will not just be ‘cutting and pasting’ information into the form of a book report. They will be living, feeling, and remembering the story for a lifetime! Permission is granted to copy and use the student activity page in the classroom. Excellent resource! Hope they do another just like this one–different titles or maybe with picture text books!!!!
Rating: 5 / 5