|Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute||Home| Dora Janeway Odarenko
The second goal is to use the information, excitement, and
questions generated by this unit to provide daily writing
topics. As students work on them, and particularly on
description and exploration of feelings, they will better
understand what their teachers mean by “elaboration.” My hope is
that, through this daily reading and writing, students will
begin to compare and contrast aspects of their own lives to
those of the characters about whom they are reading. They can
stretch their imaginations, not only for their own lives but for
the lives of others, and, in this way, they may begin to
appreciate commonality and difference. But the students will not
only read, listen, converse, and write. They will edit, peer-
edit, publish and share what they have written. They will tape
works in progress so that their own words become part of their
experience of oral language. The unit will culminate with a
Travelers’ Tea, to which families will be invited,