Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie

Well we have officially left the world of geology and are beginning our adventures with the sea!  To kick off this unit we read a wonderful book called, Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie.  This is true story of courage.  It tells all about how a young girl kept the lighthouse lights burning all by herself during a tremendous storm.  If you like books about bravery, then this is the book for you.  But you don't have to take my word for it...

As we read the book we really focused on deep thinking comprehension skills.  Students determined the main idea, wrote down interesting words, discussed the story parts, determined Abbie's character traits, sequenced the story, shared their favorite part, and wrote a letter to the main character.  Wow!  We have been busy!

 

We also tied in math to create these neat lighthouses using coordinate graphing.

I absolutely love all the fantastic art that accompanies our ocean unit.  Here is our first piece -lighthouses.  Students designed their lighthouse then outlined it in black Sharpie.  Next they used crayons to color it in.  We pressed super hard so they look like pastels minus all the smudging.  Last they watercolored the background.  Two cool things about this watercolor process were that they used salt to make it look like was raining, and the resist of the crayon shows the light shining brightly.