The Great Kapok Tree

The many different animals that live in a great kapok tree in the Brazilian rainforest try to convince a man with an ax of the importance of not cutting down their home.

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A Guide for Using the Great Kapok Tree in the Classroom

The many different animals that live in a great kapok tree in the Brazilian rainforest try to convince a man with an ax of the importance of not cutting down their home.

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The Great Kapok Tree

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The Great Kapok Tree Close Reading and Text Dependent Questions

Students analyze The Great Kapok Tree using key skills from the Common Core. Close reading of the text is required to answer text-dependent questions. Included are student pages with the text-dependent questions as well as suggested answers.

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The Great Kapok Tree Vocabulary Activities

These vocabulary activities for The Great Kapok Tree incorporate key skills from the Common Core. The activities integrate vocabulary with a study of the text. Includes text-dependent questions, definitions, and text-based sentences.

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The Great Kapok Tree Comprehension Assessment

These assessment questions for The Great Kapok Tree are modeled after current testing models requiring students to revisit the text for answers. Students have to support their opinions and inferences with examples from the text.

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The Great Kapok Tree Leveled Comprehension Questions

These leveled discussion questions about The Great Kapok Tree require students to read closely, make connections, and share their analyses. Included are leveled comprehension questions and suggested answers.

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An Instructional Guide for Literature The Great Kapok Tree

By completing fun, challenging activities and lessons, students will uncover the true meaning behind this beautifully illustrated story. This instructional guide for literature is the perfect tool to aid students in analyzing and comprehending this sensational story. Appealing and challenging cross-curricular lessons and activities were written to support the text and incorporate research-based literacy skills to help students become thorough readers. These lessons and activities work in conjunction with the text to teach students how to analyze and comprehend story elements in multiple ways, practice close reading and text-based vocabulary, determine meaning through text-dependent questions, and much more.

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A River Ran Wild

An environmental history of the Nashua River, from its discovery by Indians through the polluting years of the Industrial Revolution to the ambitious clean-up that revitalized it.

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The Dragon and the Unicorn

Valerio the dragon and Allegra the unicorn are driven into hiding when humans begin to destroy the natural beauty of their land, but they receive hope when they befriend the daughter of the man responsible.

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Making a Difference in the World

A prominent children's book author and illustrator shares her life, her daily activities, her interest in environmental preservation, and her creative process, showing how all are intertwined.

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Orangutan

A look at orangutans in the rain forest as they swing through the treetops and care for their babies.

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The Armadillo from Amarillo

A wandering armadillo sees some of the cities, historic sites, geographic features, and wildlife of Texas.

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The Shaman s Apprentice

In a Tirio village deep in the heart of the Amazon rain forest, the shaman Nahtahlah has a place of honor in his tribe. Young Kamanya wants to learn the healing secrets of the forest plants--he hopes that he, too, will become the tribe’s shaman, so that he can cure his people. When the villagers fall sick with an illness that Nahtahlah cannot cure, many lose faith in the shaman’s wisdom--until a foreign woman helps them understand its value while giving Kamanya an opportunity to realize his dream. Lynne Cherry returns to the rain forest with ethnobotanist Mark J. Plotkin to tell an important story about the healing plants of the earth-and why we must protect them.

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Flute s Journey

A young wood thrush makes his first migration from his nesting ground in a forest preserve in Maryland to his winter home in Costa Rica and back again.

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Integrating Learning Through Story

This book is an excellent reference source for those interested in alternative curriculum designs. It offers teachers and curriculum planners a theoretical framework for organizing learning experiences that are consistent with goal-based, holistic integration and constructivist learning theory.

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Portraits of Literacy Development

With an emphasis on the many uses of assessment data, this book offers prospective teachers a unique new approach to using various assessments to inform their literacy instruction at every level. Through examples and discussion, readers are shown how to scaffold literacy instruction for emergent, early, and fluent readers, based on information they have gathered about pupils' learning. A solid research base and strong treatment of underlying theory support dozens of practical, accessible strategies that are clearly aligned with performance-based assessments. The alignment of performance-based assessments and corresponding instructional strategies with national standards facilitates prospective teachers' understanding of the “Leave No Child Behind” initiative and its implications—prepares them for the expectations of colleagues, parents, and school boards. Includes coverage of technology as it relates to literacy teaching and learning. The authors' clear, pragmatic style makes the material easily understandable to undergraduates, graduates and classroom teachers of literacy in Early Childhood and Elementary Schools.

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Using Children s Literature Across the Curriculum

Catherine M. O'Callaghan, Patricia A. Antonacci, Lucy P. Murphy, Florence D. Musiello, and Eugene Wolfson "Using Children's Literature Across the Curriculum: A Handbook of Instructional Strategies" This resource uniquely offers preservice and inservice teachers templates for using quality children's literature to implement six themes across grades K-8. The themes are based on national curriculum standards and text sets are carefully selected to facilitate discussion, analysis, and problem solving across the grades. "Using Children s Literature Across the Curriculum, "provides teachers with a guide to using multilayered texts to facilitate students attainment of critical literacy. It is designed to be a supplemental guide for teachers in designing literacy instruction. The instructional sequence includes collaborative inquiry activities across the curriculum to extend each theme to math, science, technology and social studies. Teachers are shown how to incorporate family literacy with a component entitled Home School Connections and to differentiate instruction for individual learners with a section entitled On Your Own Activities . The theme concludes with a critical literacy activity that applies the content knowledge of the theme with collaborative inquiry. ""I m excited to have this tool to share with the teachers in our program ..." "I had been given this as a first year teacher, I would have been thrilled. It s wonderful all encompassing."" - Susan T. Weakland, Pathways Educational Program, Curriculum Coordinator, Moultrie, GA "Highly recommended!" - Dr. Gail Singleton Taylor, Old Dominion University, Darden College of Education, Norfolk, VA ""A useful reference for teachers (new and experienced) to use to see how interdisciplinary work can be accomplished. It provides good examples, activities, and references that would provide a successful first experience for teachers working" "with thematic studies."" - Lisa Grundstrom, Bloomington Public Schools, K-2 Teacher, Bloomington, MN "

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Reading Rainbow Guide to Children s Books

Describes the best books that have appeared on the "Reading Rainbow"

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Media Spectrum

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