The power of WIDE READING Across the Curriculum

The Power of WIDE READING.  
By D

All Schools have in their Spanish CCSS Reading Libraries the following texts Querido Salvatierra by Simon James and La historia del Rainbow Warrior por Kalandraka.  Both texts can be developed as a study of relationships, social justice, change and point of view.  Querido Salvatierra is about a little girl who suspects that she has a whale in her kiddie pool so she and "greenpeace" (aka. Salvatierra) write letters back and forth about whether this could be possible and if it were how to care for the creature.  Amos y Boris by William Steig addresses a friendship between a raton and a whale.  The raton is naufrago and the whale saves him to land only later to become beached and need the raton's help to get to sea.  Both stories are also about love and letting go, but from surprising scientific perspectives.  The Rainbow Warrior text is about social action to save the lives of marine life, but especially of mammals hunted for their fur.  It tells the story of how people can create social action and bring change and policy.  These three texts paired with and online article about a whale who got lost in the Hudson River and was saved by the community (remember Henry se equivoca) and also addresses the biological needs of whales, with human action to preserve, revere and act to create optimal conditions for their welfare and survival.

Reading WIDELY across the curriculum helps to support making connections between texts for common themes, relationships to social and scientific action and building a deeper body of knowledge for our linguistically talented students.  I encourage you all to read widely and to look out/ask your effectiveness coaches about incoming authentic Spanish texts that are FANTASTIC!!! Start a little read around reading club-it is good stuff!