Teacher's Guide Author: Nohemi Arias, 3rd grade teacher, Lewis E. Rowe Elementary School, Clark County School District
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Teachers' guides exist for Sarah, Plain and Tall
Additional teacher's Guides are available for Patty Reed's Doll, Sallie Fox, and other exploration children's books.
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Book Overview: Book Overview: Sarah, Plain and Tall is a novel set in the late 19th century. It is the tale of a widowed farmer (from Kansas) who posts an advertisement for a wife and a mother for his two children, Anna and Caleb. A woman from Maine, Sarah, responds to the advertisement and heads to Kansas for a visit. When Sarah arrives she is homesick for Maine, especially for the ocean which she misses greatly. At the end, Sarah decides to stay with the family. In chapter 4, Sarah and the kids go picking wildflowers and they discuss the different plants and flowers that grow both in Kansas and in Maine. In chapter 5, Sarah talks to the family about the sand dunes in Maine and they create a hay dune so that Sarah felt more at home. In this chapter the family remembered the places they cheriched and their loved ones through music. In chapter 6 Sarah and the kids go for a swim in the pond and they discuss winters in Maine and how different they would be from winters in Kansas.
Book Themes: abandonment, loss, love, adventure, westward movement, womens' experience moving west, gender roles, family life, everyday life in the prairie, coping with change, singing, friendly letters, friendship, wildflowers, sand dunes, weather and climate, environment, emotions, communication.
Suggested Activities
- Language Arts
- Describing a character with two words.
- Sarah described herself as plan and tall and Anna as fair and thin.. Have students pair up and create titles for their own stories. They should use two adjectives to describe their partner. You can write on the board: ________(name), ______(adj.) and ________ (adj.) Then have students write descriptive paragraphs that go with their titles.
- Standards Addressed
- CEF (3)6.2.A: write narrative/descriptive paragraphs
- CEF (3)1.4.A8: comprehend, build, and extent vocabulary using parts of speech
- Write a song about your favorite season
- Singing was another important element in the novel. Have students get into groups (4-5) and compose a song about their favorite season. Have each group record their song and create an album.
- Standards Addressed
- CEF (3)6.7.B: write a variety of communications in appropriate formats
- CEF (3)8.0: students speak using organization, style, tone, voice, and media aids appropriate to audience and purpose.
- Science CEF (3)1.2: cooperate and contribute ideas within a group
Mathematics
- Read an advertisement from your local newspaper. Then have students estimate the cost of the advertisement. After, figure the cost of the advertisements based on the number of words and its dimensions.
- Standards Addressed
- CEF (3)1.13: immediately use and recall addition facts
- CEF (3)1.16: round numbers to nearest tens and hundreds to determine reasonableness of answers.
- CEF (3)1.17: use a variety of appropriate strategies to estimate, compute, and solve mathematical and practical problems.
- CEF (3)1.22 add and subtract decimals using money as a model.
- CEF (3)3.10 read and write money notation
- Find out the approximate mileage from Maine to Kansas and then figure out how much money it would cost to drive there based on the national average price of gas. You can extend this lesson by comparing and contrasting the cost of driving there, flying there, or taking an alternative mode of transportation.
- Standards Addressed
- CEF (3)1.17: use a variety of appropriate strategies to estimate, compute, and solve mathematical and practical problems.
- CEF (3)1.13: immediately use and recall addition facts
- CEF (3)1.16: round numbers to nearest tens and hundreds to determine reasonableness of answers.
- CEF (3)1.22 add and subtract decimals using money as a model.
- CEF (3)3.10 read and write money notation
- Social Studies
- Out to the west!
- Plan a route from Maine to Kansas using a U.S. Highway map. Discuss with your class how many states you crossed, terrain changes, and natural features.
- Standards Addressed
- CEF (3)3.3: use maps, globes, photographs, and graphs to collect geographical information.
- CEF (3)3.5: recognize different types of maps
- CEF (3)3.9: identify the differences between physical and human features
- Now and Then
- Have students create a graphic organizer (double bubble map works great) comparing and contrasting life in the mid 1800’s and the present. Students can focus on communities, families, gender roles, and reasons for migration/moving.
- Standards Addressed
- CEF (3)3.10: identify how language, stories, art, and customs express culture
- CEF (3)3.11: discuss how people view their communities
- CEF (3)3.10: identify how language, stories, art, and customs express culture
- CEF (3)3.27: compare the wants and needs of people in different communities and the means used to fulfill those wants and needs
- CEF (3)4.15: read and interpret historical passage
- Science
- Wild about Wildflowers
- Divide your class into groups (4-5) and assign each group a wildflower to research. Each team will need to learn where their flower grows, when it blooms, color of the blossoms/characteristics, and at least one interesting fact. Have students present their findings in a power point presentation. Compile all the presentations to form a wildflower guide. (www.wildflowers.org/plants/)
- Standards Addressed
- Technology CEF (3)3.1: select a research topic using technology\
- Technology CEF (3)2.5: use a wide variety of media and technology resources
- Science CEF (3)1.2: cooperate and contribute ideas within a group
- Science CEF(3)4.3: investigate and describe how different organisms coexist and interact with one another
- Build a Prairie
- Visit http://www.bellmuseum.org/distancelearning/prairie/index.html and and print the prairie guide. Divide your class into groups (grasses, forbs, birds, herps, insects, mammals) and they will need to become experts in their assigned field. When students have acquired enough information about their assigned field go back to the bellmuseum.org site and as a class build a prairie together.
- Standards Addressed
- Technology CEF (3)3.1: select a research topic using technology
- Technology CEF (3)2.5: use a wide variety of media and technology resources
- Science CEF (3)1.2: cooperate and contribute ideas within a group
- Science CEF(3)4.3: investigate and describe how different organisms coexist and interact with one another
- Science CEF(3)4.7: investigate, compare, and contrast identifiable structures and characteristics of plants and animals that enable them to grow, reproduce, and survive.
Historical Overview of Book Themes
With the concept of Manifest Destiny clear in the American mind, the US embarked on territorial expansion from the end of the American Revolution to the beginning of the Civil war in 1860. Many American settlers began to move west bringing their own lifestyles and ideals. The Americans moving west had to adapt to a new lifestyle and face new challenges like dealing with the Native Americans, adapting to land and climate, and gender roles changing especially for women.
At the beginning of the “internal” expansion, as Mark S. Joy calls it in his book American Expansionism, women were expected to act in a weak and almost hysterical manner after losing their sense of community and dealing with life in the frontier. Gender norms and expectations affected all types of western women in the same way and yet they pushed customary boundaries and tested the limits.
"Sometimes they had feminist’s intentions, but other times they sought to fulfill their own needs, talents, and desires. As a result, women turned up everywhere and often in unexpected places: holding jobs, fighting for the right of suffrage, forming labor organizations, and divorcing their spouses at a higher rate than women in any other region of the country." (Riley 1992)
Additional Resources
- http:www.nps.gov/plants/cw by the National Park Service: This site is names Celebrating Wildflowers, which is a a collaborative commemoration between the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service, which emphasizes the importance of conservation and management of native plants and plant habitats and highlights the aesthetic, recreational, biological, medicinal, and economic values of wildflowers.
- http://http//www.letterwritingguide.com/friendlyletterformat.htm This site is a letter writing guide that contains tips, advice, and sample letters to help you in your letter writing activities.
- http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/petroleum/info_glance/petroleum.html by The Energy Information Administration : Office site for government energy statistics.
- http://www.vinton-shellsburg.k12.ia.us/tms/seventh/rdg7/hf/1800.html Information on Westward expansion and frontier life and more.
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Note: This teacher's guide was developed as part of one of the Clark County School District's Teaching American History grants. In this grant module, teachers focused on using children's historical literature to teach cross-curricular concepts relating to 19th century westward movement. For more information about this blog, related teacher's guides, or the grant module, please contact Dr. Christy Keeler.
3 comments:
I really enjoyed your lesson on build a prarie! This lesson will be great for third graders. It will really engage them in to the topic.
I really enjoyed looking at your blog! I thought that your wildflower science lesson was great. I loved the idea of the students creating a powerpoint to display all of their research. Two things that I think you can have expanded on were your historical overview and the chapter summaries. Overall a great job!
"Describing a Character with Two Words" is a great way to reinforce grammatical terms. I recommend you have them start this activity during the first chapter of the book and then keep a table as they read the book for each character. The students would additional adjectives for each person as they read through the book.
What a great idea to have students write and record their own songs! You could then record these on a CD for each child to take home and you could post the songs on your class website. I do recommend, however, that you have their songs focus on something other than seasons. Because seasons fall more into the kindergarten and first grade curricula, you may consider other topics like "Pioneering," "Exploration," "Moving," etc.
How could you have students find resources to determine actual advertising costs? Could you have them compare costs to advertise in the newspaper vs. a billboard vs. the radio vs. television? This would be a great way to bring in Internet research.
For "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles," have students compare train schedules during the 1800s and now. Are the speeds different? Do they stop at more or fewer locations? Why?
What a great find - the Bell Museum Prairie activity! Adding the jigsaw instructional method was a flash of brilliance! :-)
I agree with Lacey Peckham that the PowerPoint would be a good way to share the wildflower research. This allows the visual component to be richly displayed.
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