A Day on the Prairie by Third Grade Students of Kildeer Countryside Elementary School

A book written and illustrated by a group of third-grade students. Dedicated to the thesaurus, the students inform us of the plants, flowers, insects, birds, and other animals that live on the prairie in a poetic tone.

Word Choice

Perfect to use for a lesson on word choice! The authors hand-picked words to accurately and poetically describe life on the prairie. A wonderful model to use to show students how word choice enhances the description of a topic and how they can be authors, too. Lesson Idea: Read aloud this text to students and have them pick out the descriptive words or phrases that they like. Create a list of adjectives to use as a resource in the classroom. Encourage students to use different descriptive words when they are writing.

Night in the Country by Cynthia Rylant

What are the sounds you hear on a dark, quiet country night? The nightime world awakens as the people in the country sleep. Listen carefully, you might miss something. Sensory Details This book uses sensory details to make you feel like you are actually in the country. Lesson Idea: Read aloud the text and model for students how to find the various sensory details the author uses to make the story "come to life." Create a chart (large enough for everyone to see) with various senses (hearing, seeing, smelling, etc.) and boxes to note the text. As you read aloud the text, stop when you come to details that make you use your senses. Write in the box for the correct sense the text that made you use that sense. Students can use the chart as a resource for their own writing.

Henry's Freedom Box by Ellen Levine

A true story of Henry Brown, a run away slave on the Underground Railroad, who found an ingenious way to find freedom. . . he shipped himself in a box.

Asking Questions

This is a wonderful book to use to begin a unit on The Underground Railroad. You can use this book to activate your students' background knowledge about slavery and The Underground Railroad. Lesson Idea: Have students ask (and write down) questions about the topic of slavery and The Underground Railroad prior to reading the text. Next ask students to write down questions they have during reading. Read the text again and have students determine if answers to their questions can be found. Finally, have students write down any questions they still have after reading the text.

When I Was Young in the Mountains by Cynthia Rylant

Inspired by Cynthia Rylant's childhood spent with her grandparents in the mountains of West Virginia, Rylant lyrically describes the simplicity of living in the country using the phrase, "When I was young in the mountains. . .".

Writers Workshop

Brainstorming Topics
This book is useful for many writers workshop lessons. After introducing writers' notebooks to students, this book can be used to introduce a way to brainstorm topics for the notebook. After I model from my own life, I have students use the phrase, "When I was young. . . " to begin their own brainstorming of ideas they might use as seeds for writing pieces.

How We Crossed the West: The Adventures of Lewis & Clark by Rosalyn Schanzer

Drawn from the actual letters and journals of Lewis and Clark, it begins with two letters from the men as they decide to embark on the expedition together. The rest of the text is written in journal format about the people and places that the two men encountered as they traveled west of the Mississippi.

Making Connections

This text can be used at the beginning of a unit on Lewis and Clark. Since it is written in journal format, it lends iself nicely to making connections. Use it as a read aloud and model for students how to make text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections. Provide a graphic organizer and model for students how to display your connections on the organizer. Allow students to practice making connections to other texts using the organizer as a guide. Eventually, you want students to be able to make connections without the use of an organizer.