Isla, The Magical Journey

How it works:

The journey inspired by the book called "Isla" written by Arthur Dorros and illustrated by Elisa Kleven has no end. The more you get into this book the more connections you can find to just about any curricular area imaginable.

The magical journey in this unit begins with the reading of the story and finding out about life in a tropical island, Puerto Rico. It continues on to investigate more about tropical islands, rainforests, oceans and the way of living in different places of the world. It is brought home and related to the children's own experiences by the nature of our country being a country of immigrants. Most students, especially in this area of California, if not themselves, they have a relative that remembers their homeland and dreams about it just like "abuela" does in this story.

Connections are made with maps, because of the perspective of the illustrations in the book. Map skills are learned easily in this unit. The perspective from the illustrations is also a great lead in to imagining the student's local area from above, to learn about the local geographical features, and to explore other related social studies standards for third graders.

In this unit the students imagine that they are flying over the Santa Maria Valley and draw what they see with their mind on what will become a page for a class book. Writing a description of what is seen, and writing about what they would do if they could actually fly around the area follows this activity.

The Internet provides access to areas, views, perspectives that are not readily available otherwise. Aerial views of one's neighborhood can change the way one perceives their living environment.

And this is just the beginning.

Assessment:

Each lesson has a rubric for scoring the work. The final unit evaluation is the average of the sum of the individual evaluations for each lesson. Lesson One Rubric, Lesson Two Rubric, Lesson Three Rubric, Lesson Four Rubric, Lesson Five Rubric.

Standards:

LA: fluency, vocabulary development, comprehension, response, analysis, writing.

Math: units and measurement to quantify properties.

Social Studies: learn about our connections to the past and ways in which particularly local, regional and national, government and traditions have developed and left marks on current society, providing common memories. Map skills.

Science: Structures of life, environments

Visual Arts Standards: This unit addresses several visual arts standards   

Software or Materials Used:

Computer, Internet Connection, E-mail capabilities (optional), digital camera, scanner, Microsoft Office (Word, Excel and Photo Editor), a Paint program and printer.

Keywords: 

Isla, literature, Arthur Dorros, Elisa Kleven, maps, map skills, tropical islands, Puerto Rico, compass rose

The Students: 

The students that participated in this unit were 22 third graders, mostly second and third generation Hispanics (Mexico - no other countries represented) and four Philipino. From 2 to 5 are advanced students (one identified as a GATE [Gifted And Talented Education] student, the others referred only), 2 resource students, 5 students with SSTs (Student Study Team). Half the students are bused in from other neighborhoods.

For the lessons in this unit the students were group as a whole class or worked with individually (one-on-one). For some of the Internet activities they were in pair or small groups (3-5 students).

One third of my class was very adept at using the computer and the Internet. The rest of the class had some experience with computes and were not afraid to dive right in with the exception of two timid students that needed a peer "expert" to encourage them along.

Overall Value: 

This is a very versatile unit that covers standards in many curricular areas.

The goals of this unit are:

• To familiarize the students with other cultures and sensitize towards people who are different, or who have different life experiences/lifestyles
• To increase the student's knowledge of American history, culture and patriotic symbols
• To increase student's writing skills by using the writing process in creative story writing
• To help the students increase their map skills (achieve the concept of mapping, compass rose and it's uses)
• To give the students practice in using drawing and word processing programs
• To give the students experience with the Internet

Subject Area: Language Arts and Social Studies, Math, Art                                  

 Starting Grade Level: 2

 Ending Grade Level:4

Tips for the Teacher:

• Check out the websites before you need them because they are constantly changing.
• Create a hot list with the sites for the students to go to.
• Teach students to be "experts" in the different technologies, so that they can relieve the teacher from having to help all students individually.

Jessica N. Rivera has been teaching in Santa Barbara County for The Santa Maria-Bonita School District since 1989. Her experience includes teaching kindergarten through third grade.

She earned her first teaching degree in México where she taught for a year before moving to the US. Later she earned an A.A. degree in Bilingual Cross-Cultural Studies at Ventura college, a B.A. in Art Studio at UCSB, a Bilingual Cross-Cultural Multiple Subject credential with emphasis in Spanish at UCSB, and most recently a master's degree in Educational Technology at Pepperdine University.

School: Ida Redmond Taylor Elementary

e-mail: jrivera@smbsd.k12.ca.us