Page 34 - How to teach reading with heart
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Once you have built the background of Underline them in a different color
Alaska and the Race you might want to marker and discuss the type of rhyme.
move into books and information about Each day of the week has a different
the dogs that are the primary characters question regarding the weekly poem.
in this great race. Use the picture book,
Akiak and/or the novels (listed above) As the teacher it is up to you to set the
to discuss how dogs are trained. The pace, arrange the unit to meet you and
hierarchy of dogs on a sled team. What your students needs. However you decide
a musher looks for when selecting dogs. to accomplish everything within this unit
The Iditarod education website contains it becomes a multisensory, informative
unlimited information. Students will be and interesting reading unit.
able to communicate with the mushers,
ask questions, sometimes even SKYPE Now to tell you the real reason I did this
with a musher. unit. It is like a sacred moment for me.
Makes me want to whisper. When you visit
Using Poetry: the Iditarod Race website you will see:
Poetry is an integral part of every reading
unit. For this unit I would use the book Eight Traits of a Successful Musher
Dogteam. I would select one stanza I nnovation
or one page and copy it in my own D iligence
handwriting on a large (18x24) sheet of I ntegrity
paper using markers. I would also draw T eamwork
rough illustrations around stanza. This A ttitude
would allow poetry to be interactive and R espect
come to life with pictures. I would hang O ptimism
this large poem or stanza of a poem on D etermination
the wall. ( I had a large magnet board),
students were given a small typed copy Powerful words, life changing words,
of the week’s poem and glued it into their core words to be integrated into every
reading journals. First day of reading human’s life and each year students
the poem my question was always about could only recognize three of the words.
vocabulary. With a different color marker, Throughout the unit we defined the
a student makes a box around any words words, discussed the words, applied the
they do not know. We then have a mini words to their lives. We discussed how
vocabulary lesson and students record these were traits of a person and how
their definitions in the reading journals. traits become permanent in one’s life.
Next day, Do you see any rhyming words? Then, at the beginning of the last week
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