Quick Link to Plimoth Plantation's Site Via Scholastic Books

      Looking for more fresh ways to incorporate nonfiction reading instruction with your students? Scholastic posted a new link today to a great site that you can use for a learning opportunity about "Plimoth Plantation" while tying in nonfiction reading skills and researching. 

http://www.scholastic.com/scholastic_thanksgiving/

      The slides would be good for a compare and contrast discussion, with sections on housing, clothing, chores, food, school, and games. For upper grades, there is a WebQuest that is a structured researching opportunity. 

http://www.scholastic.com/scholastic_thanksgiving/feast/webquest.htm

     You could also use these slides to serve as a great introduction to build background knowledge before reading Thanksgiving texts. Author Kate Waters wrote a great series on fictionalized characters photographed in time period clothing and settings around the Plymouth area. There is a timeline, a diagram of a ship, and map that all have pop up text boxes that serve as great text features that support the content. There are historical fiction letters written in first person from the perspective of an English settler girl and a Wampanoag boy.

http://www.scholastic.com/scholastic_thanksgiving/letters.asp

      Kate Water's official author website link is here below. This goes straight to the pages on "writing tips" from her to kids.

http://www.katewaters.com/writing_tips.html

     If anyone is interested in borrowing any of the Kate Waters books, I have them all! :) The titles are:

• Samuel Eaton's Day
• Sarah Morton's Day
• Tapenum's Day
• On the Mayflower

     In addition, I also have a set of Kate Water's Mary Geddy's Day, about a young girl from Colonial Williamsburg. Our MW reading room has a reading group set, too! :)