This website was designed as a resource for teachers who are wishing to teach a unit on the treatment of immigrants and the meaning of community. In addition to a set of texts, including children's books and multimedia resources, that can be taught as companion texts to Wishtree, we have also provided vocabulary and comprehension instructional resources that pair with Wishtree. The text set has a central focus on the treatment of immigrants in the United States, and how communities can be welcoming of newcomers whether they are immigrants or not, but also includes texts related to the ecological importance and animal habitats that trees provide in in nature to create their own little communities.
Wishtree was divided into five sections, about forty pages each, and ten Tier Two (Beck, McKeown & Kucan, 2013, p. 9-10) vocabulary words were chosen from each section. From each of the ten words from each section, five words were chosen to develop further with instructional resources that included:
For each section of each of the five chosen words, five vocabulary instructional activities were designed to use with students to learn the vocabulary. Each of the five words for each section was one of the key words in at least one of the activities developed.
We paced the reading of Wishtree as a whole-class reading experience over the course of three school weeks. Within the pacing guide, we included the following:
The webpage also contains the following:
References:
Applegate, K. (2017). Wishtree. New York, NY: Feiwel and Friends.
Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2013). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary instruction. New York: Guilford Press.
Serravallo, J. (2015). The reading strategies book: Your everything guide to developing skilled readers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.