• Thanksgiving is a holiday that we celebrate here in the U.S.  But Why do we celebrate it? What's the big deal to all these Americans?  And WHY is it all about FOOD?  TODAY, our goal is to do a little digging and reading and writing about Thanksgiving!  Gobble, Gobble!
  
  

Activities:
Brainstorming:  What are some words associated with Thanksgiving?  Let's do a word cloud!  www.wordle.net
A little history:   http://www.scholastic.com/scholastic_thanksgiving/feast/webquest.htm 
How do you think Thanksgiving is related/connected to Columbus Day?

Ever heard the question,  "What'd you do this weekend?"  Everyone has, at some point.  What is the person actually asking for?  Do they want a minute by minute account of your weekend?  NO!  They want a summary.  Therefore anytime you  have told your buds at school what you did over the weekend you summarized a series of events. 
SO, our next venture is SUMMARIZING.  What?  Why should we focus on summarizing?  How are we going to do that?  Besides, who uses summarizing skills?  We hope to answer all those questions and more during our unit on creating summaries. 
Let's follow these links to find out more:
http://www.readingquest.org/strat/summarize.html
Weird video, but useful
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qn_ZUf3r9zg
Again, a little strange, but useful:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlc0RXRUy-g&feature=related&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active

TWO GREAT SUMMARIZING STRATEGIES:
Get the Gist
Somebody Wanted But So Then

PRACTICE:
http://englishforeveryone.org/PDFs/Level_6_Passage_1.pdf
http://englishforeveryone.org/PDFs/Level_6_Passage_2.pdf
http://englishforeveryone.org/PDFs/Level_6_Passage_3.pdf