Eastern Woodlands

Our state chunks all the eastern woodlands together. It is a lot of information. A chapter book read aloud that I have used for several years is Sees Behind Trees by Micheal Dorris. Great hook for the book here.

I always start this book at the beginning of the native American Unit-- hopefully by the time we are finished with the unit, the students have used all the clues to figure out what region is used as the setting.   The indicators that are easily used for this text throughout the unit are:

• SCCCRL5.1 Making Inferences
• SCCCRL 6.1 Determining the Theme; summarizing
• SCCCRL8.1a How conflicts cause a character to change or revise plans
• SCCCRL9.1 How the author uses imagery to shape tone
• SCCCRL9.2 How authors word choice creates mood; emphasizes aspects of character or contributes to the meaning.

This document has some great text based questions--that go with this text-- the standards that they list are the common core--
(Which are VERY  close to our SC College and Career standards.)
Micheal Dorris uses fantastic word choice to help readers visualize the story.  Some activities that go with this book that I plan to use in workstations this year:
Sees Behind Trees activities
Free vocabulary powerpoint

Micheal Dorris has two other books that are amazing!  The first one is Guests.

I can never get to this book (it touches on the colonist's encounter with the natives)  and do my exploration chapter book too-- but I have found that I have a few students who are good readers like to read this book once I have finished with Sees Behind Trees.

 I did use this book a few years ago, but I didn't read Sees Behind trees that year. I did a few wampum activities with my students.

 The second book is one I need to order and read.  A few of my teacher friends use this when they are finishing their Native American Unit-- because the time period is 1492--Columbus's arrival.  The book is Morning Girl.

Any of these books would be great to compare and contrast to one another if you have the time to read the books.  As you discuss themes-- there are some common themes-- especially in Guests and Sees Behind Trees.




A must have for me--is this book:

It has the content I need to teach this area.  I use the informational pages as close reads and we glean our information about this region from the close reads.  There are times when I will assign groups an informational page and they write down the key information (central ideas) and then they Jigsaw.  I will blog later about that one. :)
 We use tree maps for this information, but the Jigsaw graphic organizer  is good too.



Guided reading
Eastern Woodlands  We practice highlighting evidence from the text to support our answers
Native Poetry   I will periodically choose a poem for guided reading and we will discuss stanzas, figurative language, rhyme scheme, and even the theme. This site has several to choose from.
 Legend with questions 

Interactive computer activities
Native American Interactive sites 
Native American Activities Good for a workstation at the smart board or computer

Assessments:
Southern Eastern Woodlands
Lower Level Learners modified quiz
Iroquois
Longhouses
topic sentences and details (Iroquois theme)
Gathering Nouns (ELA with a native Theme)