In This Place Unit 3 School Links and Newsletters

What Is the Unit About?
This unit offers your child opportunities to read poetry and short stories that offer powerful word pictures of places in Canada. As they discuss characters, places, and events, students will learn and practise writing skills that well-known Canadian authors use.

What Will We Learn?
This unit is planned to help your child:

• read stories and poems about many places in Canada
• find out how authors create settings in different time periods and places
• express his or her opinions and feelings about the poems, stories, and characters
• compare the stories in this unit with others he or she has read
• use a variety of reading strategies
• write a poem and a story about a special place

.How Can You Help At Home?

• Compare stories you and other family members read as children with ones your child enjoys.
• Invite your child to share the poetry, stories, and plays that he or she has written.
• Encourage your child to talk about special places that he or she has visited or read about.
• Play a guessing game in which you and your child take turns describing and identifying a place. Use descriptive words to expand your child's vocabulary.
• Use community resources, such as the library, to find books by Canadian authors.
• Find stories and poems with descriptive language and strong settings to read aloud to your child. Talk about the language the author uses.
• Provide opportunities for your child to listen to family stories about special places and events.
• Use the Internet to find Web sites where your child can learn about favourite authors.

Related Readings
The following titles are related readings which you may already have in your home, or borrow from your local library.

• Andrews, Jan.  Very Last First Time. Vancouver: Groundwood Books/Douglas and McIntyre, 1985.
• Foley, Patricia.  John and the Fiddler. New York: Harper and Row Junior Books, 1990.
• Harrison, Ted.  O Canada. Toronto: Kids Can Press Ltd., 1992.
• Gibbons, Gail.  Caves and Caverns. San Diego: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1993.
• Livingston, Myra Cohn.  Cricket Never Does: A Collection of Haiku and Tanka. New York: Margaret K. McElderry Books, 1997.
• McFarlane, Sheryl.  Eagle Dreams. Victoria: Orca Book Publishers, 1994.
• Oxlade, Chris.  Flags: Facts, Things to Make Activities. New York: Franklin Watts: Grolier Publishing, 1995.
• Uchida, Yoshiko.  The Bracelet. New York: Philomel, 1993.
• Valgardson, W.D., and Ian Wallace.  Sarah and the People of Sand River. Vancouver: Groundwood/Douglas and McIntyre, 1996.