Fables -- Ireland

We moved to Irish folktales. In our nonfiction study of Ireland, one of the folktales that we learned about at National Geographic for Kids was Finn McCoul. So we started with him. Our big standard in CCSS was to recount stories, including fables and folktales, and determine their central message or moral, so our objective in most of the lessons with just that, finding the moral of the story. After that we read Jamie O'Rourke and the Giant Potatoe. While we were reading both the students would rate themselves on the objective and then take notes about the book. I told them I wanted them to think about the objective, but also any thing that made a lightbulb in their reading brain. (At the beginning of the year we discussed how we had a reading brain that would talk to us. It was like a light bulb...lightbulbs don't make any noise but you know they are there)

 
Finally, we ended up with Jaime O'Rouke and the Pooka. We followed the same pattern that we have for the previous books. The kids were taking notes while I was reading. At the end of the reading they got several minutes to finish writing down whatever they were working on, then they were able to share with a partner what they were thinking. Finally we shared out whole group.

We were about at the end of study of Ireland and it was almost St.Patrick's day, so we learned about the real St. Patrick. We started with an anticipation guide and then took notes while we read Gail Gibbon's St. Patrick's Day and watch Brain Pop. At the end they shared. One little boy was making connections between St. Patrick and Harriet Tubman. He was taking about how Patrick and Harriet Tubman were both slaves and came back to their home to try and free people.