Introducing Touching Spirit Bear: Making Predictions & Using Context Clues (L.7.4)

The Power of Choice: How Do Our Decisions Affect Our Lives and the Lives of Others?

I think middle school students can benefit a lot from learning units in themes. This summer I read Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen, and while the Lexile level is only 670, the themes in the book are complex and are ones that many middle school students will be able to relate to in some way, shape, or form. Life is all about making decisions, learning and growing from them, and transforming to become more of who you really want to be. That is exactly what the main character in this book experiences. The themes of justice, the power of nature, the circle of life, anger and revenge, culture, healing, and forgiveness are ones every human can learn from, especially adolescents. I'm planning to use Touching Spirit Bear, in addition to several non-fiction texts related to topics in TSB, to teach the Common Core Standards my co-workers and I have organized for this quarter. It's the first time I've tried this sort of unit, but I'm excited about the possibilities. I would like to give credit to Erin Grysko, whose unit guide entitled "The Power of Choice: How Do Our Decisions Affect Our Lives and the Lives of Others?" has been one of my co-workers' and my main resources. Thank you for sharing your work with the world!

In previous days, we did a few activities that required students to think about choices and decisions that would prepare them for Touching Spirit Bear and realizing how choices and decisions play a role in ALL our lives. Some of the activities included: playing Would You Rather? , watching video clips of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and The Lion King, listening to the song Cat's in the Cradle. As always, students responded orally and in writing to questions that asked them to reflect on how choices and decisions played a part in each.

Today it was finally time to start getting our hands on Touching Spirit Bear! Today's activities started like this:

 So, that's exactly what my students did - they looked at the cover and made some predictions (inferences) based on the picture clues:

 Here is what one student wrote as a result of that prompt. You'll notice the sentence stems helped him get his thinking started. Sometimes I feel like a few sentence stems are all kids need to get their thoughts going!

Here is another student response:

Students shared their thinking as a whole group, and we created a KWL chart of some things that we KNOW for sure about the book and things we WANT TO KNOW as a result of the cover and back blurb. 

Students recorded the KWL chart underneath their predictions.

In my next class with my students, I introduced some vocabulary from Ch. 1. I modeled using context clues as a word solving strategy by highlighting the clues in each of the example sentences that lead me to make an inference about what the word might mean. I modeled the first two. Students did the rest of them on their own, highlighting the clues in the sentence that led to their inference. This strategy is Common Core State Standard L.7.4. The student learning target is: I can infer the meaning of unknown words using context clues (examples found in surrounding text).

For some words, context clues aren't always an option for word solving, so we used Dictionary.com as an electronic resource to confirm whether our inferences were right. This strategy is Common Core State Standard L.7.4. The student learning target is: I can verify my inferred meaning of an unknown word by consulting general and specialized references (dictionaries).

Students filled in the definition if it was different than their inferences and/or revised their original inferred definition.

Tone/Mood & Technology Timelines

Today during Writer's Workshop, we added a bullet to our poetry anchor chart: tone & mood are established through the author's word choice.

To help students discover different tones and moods, I pulled a few pictures from the beginning of the year that showcased a variety of feelings. In the picture below, we brainstormed that Tyson looks like he has happiness inside him while Summer looks a little more disappointed. We listed these two feelings on our tone/mood anchor chart.


Then I showed this picture of Teagan and me doing a reading assessment at the beginning of the year. The class decided that we looked serious, so we added it to our anchor chart as another possible feeling a writer may express or reader may feel.


I also had students analyze a few poems to become aware of the tones and moods felt while reading actual text. After reading this poem about a girl whose mother has died, the class decided that sadness and loneliness were two feelings to add to our anchor chart of tones and moods.

 In this poem written by a child whose mom left her evoked feelings of anger and bitterness.

I also brought up the PhotoStory software students used to create their Native American PhotoStories. I said, "Remember when you got to select the music for your PhotoStory projects? Did you notice the word 'mood' above one of the drop-down boxes? You had to decide what mood you wanted your audience to feel so that the music would match it!" We looked at all the words listed and added a few to our chart.

Here is a list of all the feelings we brainstormed as a class from looking at a variety of picture and text samples.

Later in the day, I introduced a mentor text called The Great Migration by Jacob Lawrence. The content overlapped with our social studies curriculum on slaves moving north. As students listened to the text, they were to record powerful phrases and words that truly communicated the tone/mood of hopelessness. This helped students make the connection that it's the specific language we use as writer's that helps to establish the mood for a reader.

Before reading, I explained the difference between the words 'immigrant' and 'migrant' using the following slide.

After reading, I also assessed students' comprehension by asking two questions. The first question is what we call a 'in the text' question, meaning the answer to the question is written and explained in the text. The second question is a 'beyond the text' question, meaning students need to think deeply beyond the literal text to provide their answer.

Here you can see this student recorded all the powerful words and phrases that gave her a feeling of hopelessness while she listened to the Great Migration. Underneath her list of powerful words and phrases, she responded to the two comprehension questions. This activity allowed me to assess students' abilities to identify words that evoke specific feelings, in addition to their comprehension at both a literal and deep level.

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In social studies yesterday, we discussed timelines - how they're organized, how to read them, and how they can help you as a reader of historical or biographical texts. Today students had an assignment to come to class with 5-6 major life events from their own life and the years those events took place. We went to the computer lab, and I modeled how to create a timeline of events using Kidspiration software. After my modeling, students started to construct their own timelines

Once their information was typed into their timelines, I showed students how to navigate the Kidspiration image toolbar to insert a picture to match each event on their timeline. Graphic organizers + technology + social studies curriculum = a happy 4B! The kids love using this program, and I love teaching with it!