For this lesson, students will learn what linking verbs are through videos and a website. They will practice identifying linking verbs through online games. To end the lesson, they will write a paragraph about themselves using linking verbs.
Richard grew up in Kenya as a Maasai boy, herding his family’s cattle, which represented their wealth and livelihood. Richard’s challenge was to protect their cattle from the lions who prowled the night just outside the barrier of acacia branches that surrounded the farm’s boma, or stockade. Though not well-educated, 12-year-old Richard loved tinkering with electronics. Using salvaged components, spending $10, he surrounded the boma with blinking lights, and the system works; it keeps lions away. His invention, Lion Lights, is now used in Africa, Asia, and South America to protect farm animals from predators. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Your challenge is to use broken or old technology and other available resources to create a prototype that can be used to protect your home. This could involve tinkering, hacking, or redesigning the components of the technology to meet your needs.
A document is included in the resources folder that lists the complete standards-alignment for this book activity.
The true story of how Momofuko Ando was inspired to create one of the world’s most popular foods after seeing long lines of hungry people waiting for a simple bowl of ramen following World War II. He dreamed about making a new kind of ramen noodle soup that was quick, convenient, and tasty for the hungry people because he believed that peace follows from a hungry stomach. With persistence, creativity, and a little inspiration, Ando succeeded. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Develop a food product (a new food, tool, or invention, et al) to help increase access to food in your community.
Tells the story of how the Slinky, the most popular toy in American history, was invented. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Develop a commercial about the Slinky.
A document is included in the resources folder that lists the complete standards-alignment for this book activity.
A young girl has a wonderful idea to make the most MAGNIFICENT thing! But making her magnificent thing is anything but easy, and the girl repeatedly tries and fails. Eventually, she quits, but a walk with her dog and time to think, she comes back to her project with renewed enthusiasm and manages to get it just right. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Create small groups. Pass out one of the challenges listed in the lesson plan/book card to each group for them to come up with an invention that will solve the problem at hand.
A document is included in the resources folder that lists the complete standards-alignment for this book activity.
Learning to Write Narratives:
For the next two weeks, we are going to write a narrative fiction piece using some or all of the characters in Pinduli, but your story will need to be different from Janell Cannon’s story. You will need to decide how you will make it different. You will use the story of Pinduli as a guide, but you will need to change the story in some way to make your story different from the author’s. Will you solve the problem in a different way? Create a different problem with a different solution? Add a new character? You may be creative and decide how to change the story to make it your own.
Ways to Establish the Situation in a Narrative:
Direct statement
Dialogue
Question
Informative/Explanatory of snapshot in time
Lesson Plan Includes:
Narrative Checklist Sample
Instead of SAID (and other Word Replacements given)
Isatou Ceesay observed a growing problem in her community where people increasingly disposed of unwanted plastic bags, which accumulated into ugly heaps of trash. She found a way to be the agent of change by recycling the bags and transforming her community. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Use plastic bags to develop a new product (i.e. jump rope).
A document is included in the resources folder that lists the complete standards-alignment for this book activity.
Based on this model oral history experience, the toolkit includes instructional concepts, ideas, and strategies for use by educators to design a curriculum that reflects their instructional goals and the needs of their students while appreciating Vietnam veterans in their community.
With encouragement and ideas from his family, Papa, based on the real-life inventor Lodner Phillips, builds a working submarine that takes his family on a ride to the bottom of Lake Michigan. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Students will use materials on hand to design a solution to a problem they see in their school or at home. The invention should meet the needs of fellow students, teachers, bus drivers, principals, siblings, friends, or even parents.
A document is included in the resources folder that lists the complete standards-alignment for this book activity.
In this lesson, students explore the module anchor text, My Librarian Is a Camel. They discuss what makes it different from the literary texts read in Unit 1 and read and find the gist of an excerpt of this text. This text will be used throughout the unit as students build their understanding of how people around the world access books (RI.3.4, L.3.4).
Boyds Mills Press, publisher of My Librarian Is a Camel, has granted permission to make facsimiles of pages or use brief quotes, in context, for classroom use. No adaptation or changes in the text or illustration may be made without approval of Boyds Mills Press. The following credit must be used: From My Librarian Is a Camel by Margriet Ruurs. Copyright (c) 1994 by Nancy Springer. Published by Boyds Mills Press. Reprinted by permission.
In Opening B, students return to the module guiding questions to help focus their work and build a bridge between Units 1 and 2 (SL.3.1b).
Throughout this unit, students learn about countries around the world and how some people in these countries access books. Consider researching students' countries of origin and help all students make connections between their country of origin and how books are accessed, if they are. Example: Consider asking students and their families to give a brief presentation on their country of origin or to bring in mementos to share.
Students practice their fluency in this lesson by following along and reading silently as the teacher reads excerpts from My Librarian Is a Camel in Opening A and Work Times A and B.
The research reading that students complete for homework will help build both their vocabulary and knowledge pertaining to overcoming challenges in access to education, books, and reading near and far. By participating in this volume of reading over a span of time, students will develop a wide base of knowledge about the world and the words that help describe and make sense of it.
Culminating Activity: Reading and Writing Identity (5 days)
Day 1. Memoirs: Some of you may be thinking that this is the same as a personal narrative, but memoirs are more about looking back and reflecting as we did at the beginning of class. Narratives tell a story, but memoirs show how the event impacted the author’s life.
Characteristics of memoirs:
-Use 1st person point of view
-Use true accounts of actual events
-Describe any conflicts faced by the author
-Include the author’s feelings about the situation or event
Students will work on planning their memoir.
Day 2. Students will work on their memoirs, then share with partners.
Day 3. Finish draft
-Revise and edit your paper
-Peer revise and edit (if finished early)
-Revise some sentences to make them showing sentences
Narrative Checklist Sample
Third Grade Editing Checklist
Day 4. If you have access to technology, students could create a digital book, PowerPoint, or a different digital display.
Students will peer edit and then work on their memoir project.
Day 5. Students will move freely around the room to read each other’s memoirs. If your class needs more structure, set a time to indicate a rotating schedule.
This unit challenges students to view history with a critical lens, and to notice how there is always more than one side to a story. The unit begins with the Mayflower and helps students develop an understanding of why so many colonists decided to leave England and travel to the New World. Students will explore the hardships faced by the colonists, both on the ship and once they arrive in the New World, and how the colonists persevered and relied on the geography and environment to meet their needs. Students will then learn about the Wampanoag, the people who were on the land before the Pilgrims arrived. They will learn about what the Wampanoag valued, how they viewed the Pilgrims, and how the arrival of explorers and settlers negatively influenced their tribe. Then students will be pushed to analyze what really happened at the first Thanksgiving, and whose story is being told. Students will realize that the traditional story of the first Thanksgiving contains many myths that don't accurately reflect the Wampanoag and what really happened in 1621.
In this third-grade literature course, students explore the concepts of courage and friendship, beginning in Unit 1 with an author study of Roald Dahl. Even though Roald Dahl is known for writing silly, exaggerated stories with highly engaging characters, his stories have important themes and messages embedded in them.
In addition to launching a year-long exploration of the themes of friendship and courage, these texts will also help establish a positive classroom culture as students analyze what it means to help others, be a good person, and show courage. We hope this unit, in connection with all of the units in our third-grade literature course, will help students develop a deep and nuanced understanding of both friendship and courage.
In reading and writing, this unit focuses on setting a strong foundation for text analysis. Students will dive deep into characters and study the ways in which authors develop characters. They will analyze author’s word choice, both as a strategy for figuring out unknown words and as a way to improve their own narrative writing. Roald Dahl’s fun and playful writing style also allows for an exploration of how reading with expression and fluency helps develop comprehension.
This unit connects with the third grade Social Studies Unit 1, Ancient Rome. In the Social Studies unit, students study and learn about the values and beliefs of the ancient Roman Empire. In this literature unit, students begin to see the role that myths, gods, and storytelling had in ancient Rome by reading a collection on Roman myths. While reading the myths, students will be challenged to think about how the myths illustrate and show the beliefs and customs of the Roman Empire. Students will also be challenged to think what the myths teach about retaliation and generosity.
In reading and writing, this unit focuses on helping readers solidify their understanding of the connection between recounting stories, determining a central message, and using details to explain how the central message is conveyed. Through multiple readings of the same myths, students will be able to analyze and discover the way in which messages are developed. Students will then be pushed to articulate this understanding both orally and in writing. Rereading the same myth multiple times also supports students fluency and vocabulary development.
New York City in the 1860s was a mess: crowded, disgusting, filled with garbage. You see, way back in 1860, there were no subways, just cobblestone streets. That is, until Alfred Ely Beach had the idea for a fan-powered train that would travel underground. On February 26, 1870, after fifty-eight days of drilling and painting and plastering, Beach unveiled his masterpiece—and throngs of visitors took turns swooshing down the track. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Think about the way most people in your community travel. Invent a new way of traveling around your community that takes into account the following: helpful to the community, economical to those who use it, convenient for users. What would your new travel system look like? Sketch a new design, and then create a physical prototype of the new design to scale. Keep in mind: Where the system travels, how it is powered, why it is helpful to the community, and any features that make it special.
A document is included in the resources folder that lists the complete standards-alignment for this book activity.
Sarah E. Goode was one of the first African-American women to get a US patent. Working in her furniture store, she recognized a need for a multi-use bed and through hard work, ingenuity, and determination, invented her unique cupboard bed. She built more than a piece of furniture. She built a life far away from slavery, a life where her sweet dreams could come true. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Your school has had an influx of new students and every class seems to be bursting at the seams! You have an additional 10 students just in your classroom alone. Because of this limited space, your school is looking for solutions. They decided that every student is going to get a new desk and chair, but it’s going to be PORTABLE. That way, you can take your desk & chair with you wherever you might go.
A document is included in the resources folder that lists the complete standards-alignment for this book activity.
At a time when most African Americans were slaves, Benjamin Banneker was born free in 1731. Known and admired for his work in science, mathematics, and astronomy, he built a strike clock based on his own drawings and using a pocket-knife at the age of 22. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Find a discarded object that can be taken apart. Take apart the item and make your own Things Come Apart arrangement.
A document is included in the resources folder that lists the complete standards-alignment for this book activity.
In order to show the world that the completed Brooklyn Bridge was strong enough, P.T. Barnum and his twenty-one elephants parade across to prove to everyone that the bridge is safe. The resource includes a lesson plan/book card, a design challenge, and copy of a design thinking journal that provide guidance on using the book to inspire students' curiosity for design thinking. Maker Challenge: Build a bridge between two tables or chairs that will hold one elephant per student in the class. Each student designs their own “elephant” using materials in the classroom.
A document is included in the resources folder that lists the complete standards-alignment for this book activity.
In this unit, students build a deeper understanding, appreciation, and respect for the wide variety of religions found in the world by reading two core texts: What Is Religion? and One World, Many Religions: The Ways We Worship. In today’s society, illiteracy regarding religion is widespread and fuels prejudice and bullying. The negative impacts of religious illiteracy and intolerance can be minimized by teaching religion in a non-devotional, academic perspective. Therefore, this unit challenges students to build a broader awareness and understanding of religion by exposing students to a diversity of religious views and educating students about some of the most common religions. It is important to note that this unit is not intended to promote the acceptance of one particular religion or serve as a place to practice religion. Instead, it is our goal that this unit will help students better understand the differences and similarities among the religions and cultures of their classmates, and begin to appreciate and respect differences in religion.
As readers, this unit challenges students to synthesize information across two texts to build a deeper understanding of a topic. Students will analyze how authors support points, what structures they include to emphasize key ideas, and how different texts provide different perspectives and information about similar topics.
In this unit, students explore the relationship between living things and their environment and how the environment can both positively and negatively impact a species’ ability to survive. Using the Next Generation Science Standards as a guide, students will learn about different species, what they need for survival, their life cycle, and how they have adapted for survival. Then students will be challenged to create arguments that explain why some organisms are able to survive well, some survive less well, and others can’t survive at all in certain habitats. Through this unit, along with others in the sequence, students will use the scientific information they learn to think critically about the world around them.
The Science of Living Things texts were chosen as mentor texts for this unit because the author, Bobbie Kalman, uses text features and clear language to clearly communicate complex concepts about the animal kingdom, life cycles, and animal adaptations. As readers, students will be challenged to constantly ask and answer questions about key details in the text, explicitly referring to the text to support an answer or a question. Over the course of the unit, students will also deepen their understanding of how Bobbie Kalman uses text features to not only organize information, but to help a reader learn new information and facts about a subject. Students will also work on using context clues to figure out the meaning of genre-specific vocabulary, find the main idea of a section, and explain cause and effect in relation to scientific concepts.