Another book pick for the Common Core

I ordered a class set of this wonderful picture book/biography, Irena's Jar of Secrets by Marsha Vaughan to add to my nonfiction collections. It is the story of a young girl who grew up Catholic in Poland. She became a social worker who  bravely rescued 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis. The names and locations of the children where kept in a jar which she hid under a apple tree. Irena Sendler lived to the ripe old age of 98!

This picture book is not for young children due to the topic. It will be a great addition to my lessons surrounding  Number The Stars by Lois Lowry. Now I will have that (historical) fiction/nonfiction (biography)connection.
Here are some of the Common Core standards we will be working on with this book:

• RI.5.1. Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
• RI.5.2. Determine two or more main ideas of a text and explain how they are supported by key details; summarize the text.
• RI.5.3. Explain the relationships or interactions between two or more individuals, events, ideas, or concepts in a historical, scientific, or technical text based on specific information in the text.

Learning about Honey Bees

I've picked out a few class sets to help me teach the new common core standards. The Hive Detectives: Chronicle of a Honey Bee Catastrophe  by Loree Griffin Burns is one of them. Many years ago I met a bee keeper and that started my fascination with honey bees. In the last ten years millions of honey bees have been found dead or have vanished without a trace. This book delves into the mystery about what is actually happening to the honey bees and why it is important to us all.
The new common core standards push for an increase in reading informational text in elementary school. I am going to use this book to teach these standards:

• RI.5.4. Determine the meaning of general academic and domain-specific words and phrases in a text relevant to a grade 5 topic or subject area. (the book has an excellent glossary to help us as well.)
• RI.5.5. Compare and contrast the overall structure (e.g., chronology, comparison, cause/effect, problem/solution) of events, ideas, concepts, or information in two or more texts. (Their are at least  two structures present: chronological and problem/solution)
• RI.5.1. Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
• RI.5.2. Determine two or more main ideas of a text and explain how they are supported by key details; summarize the text.

Learning about the Titanic

The 100 year anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic is tomorrow. Scholastic had the first book of the I Survived..... series on sale for $1.00 a piece! What a great book! Both the 4th and 5th graders thoroughly enjoyed reading it.We started learning about the Titanic with an article in Weekly Reader. The more I use Weekly Reader the more impressed I've become. I'm always looking for nonfiction sources with great text features. This month WR had an awesome map/timeline of the sinking of the Titanic. I also found some great Youtube videos about the Titanic to use in class. After we finished I Survived The Sinking of  The Titanic we had to write a two word summary. Here is a picture of the poster we made together.

Some children chose words that described George, the main character, others chose words  to describe the feelings they had while reading the book. A few children felt an object from the story or a theme was most important. Coming up with only two words to describe a whole book can be challenging!

We also spent some time reading about the Costa Concordia that sank off the coast of Italy in January in an old WR edition.. The article gave us lots of room for comparison to the Titanic. It also had another great map to help us visualize what exactly happened to that ship.
If your students are very interested in the Titanic and you are looking for even more resources,
http://www.wegivebooks.org/books has the book Titanic Sinks! available to read online for free.  Christine