My mother in law, Sally, gave me a very worn literature collection a few years ago, Story and Verse for Children. It is much like the lit textbook I saved from my college children's literature class. In Sally's book I stumbled upon a story, "Keeping Still in the Woods," by Charles G.D. Roberts. The story is about a boy who goes with his Uncle Andy into the woods to practice sitting perfectly still in order to learn for himself how the forest creatures "were accustomed to behave when they felt quite sure no one was looking." I recently laid out a plan to share this story with my 2nd and 3rd grade class over the course of 4 class periods. From this one story I extracted 41 rich and juicy vocabulary words, like: enormity, spurned, audacious, vexation, impudent, wayfarer, furtive and mandibles.
The story has many exciting moments as the boy quietly observes the predator/prey drama of nature up close and personal from his front row seat. One of the most startling of experiences occurs when a fat grub is crawling up his sleeve, and just as he is thinking he won't be able stay the course, a black hornet lands on the grub. He watches the hornet sting the grub and then slice it open with her mandibles and suck out the juices.
Well to our surprise, yesterday, while reading our literature circle selection, Homer Price, outside on the driveway in the warm sunshine, we got to see a real life enactment of the story. A yellow jacket landed on a fat green inchworm and spilled its dark green juices onto the driveway as we watched. Homer Price was forgotten as we gathered around the yellow jacket. A second inchworm arrived on the scene and we placed it nearby, out of curiosity, not cruelty. Perceiving immanent danger, the second inchworm played possum until the yellow jacket lifted off. Suddenly inchworm #2 booked it away from the scene as fast as he could go. It was a rather intense nature class, but one we will remember. At the end of the day we "harvest" our favorite thing from the day together in our school's closing circle by passing the talking stick and sharing our favorite memory of the day. This close encounter got top billing in our class.
The story has many exciting moments as the boy quietly observes the predator/prey drama of nature up close and personal from his front row seat. One of the most startling of experiences occurs when a fat grub is crawling up his sleeve, and just as he is thinking he won't be able stay the course, a black hornet lands on the grub. He watches the hornet sting the grub and then slice it open with her mandibles and suck out the juices.
Well to our surprise, yesterday, while reading our literature circle selection, Homer Price, outside on the driveway in the warm sunshine, we got to see a real life enactment of the story. A yellow jacket landed on a fat green inchworm and spilled its dark green juices onto the driveway as we watched. Homer Price was forgotten as we gathered around the yellow jacket. A second inchworm arrived on the scene and we placed it nearby, out of curiosity, not cruelty. Perceiving immanent danger, the second inchworm played possum until the yellow jacket lifted off. Suddenly inchworm #2 booked it away from the scene as fast as he could go. It was a rather intense nature class, but one we will remember. At the end of the day we "harvest" our favorite thing from the day together in our school's closing circle by passing the talking stick and sharing our favorite memory of the day. This close encounter got top billing in our class.
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