1. How to Save a Baby Elephant By Justin O’Neill
Essential Question:
How does the human hand symbolize both hope and destruction for animals and their habitats?

2. I can…
Combine information from several texts on the same topic to write or talk about the subject.
Explain ideas from an informational text and support my explanation with the text.
Determine the main idea of a text and explain how it is supported by key details.
Interpret information that is presented orally.

3. How to Save a Baby Elephant
Summary: In the wilds of Africa, a baby elephant was alone and starving-and attacked by a lion. This is the extraordinary story of the people who were determined to keep her alive and send her back into the wild.
Genre: Expository nonfiction

4. Day 1: Read and React
Preview text. What do you notice about the diagram on the first page? How does it help keep the ideas in the text organized?
Read and React: Take 20 minutes to read the text closely with your pencil in your hand. Write down everything you are thinking in the margins (questions, reactions, inferences, predictions, new learning, new vocab….)
Zoom in: As you read, notice the main idea of the text (how humans are both harming and helping animals in the wild). Underline details that support this topic.

5. Day 1: Partner Share Share all of your thinking with your partner.
Ask your partner:
What idea was most shocking to you from the text?
In what ways to Ishanga and the other elephants seem similar to humans? Find evidence in the text.
Do you think poachers would kill elephants if they saw these similarities? Find evidence in the text.

6. Day Two: Vocab Create a four column chart
Word Text Clues Inferred Meaning Sentence
Jot down these vocab words
chaos
grave
revive
your choice

7. Day Two: Read Along On your chart, jot down:
Text clues that help you infer the meaning of the new vocab
After reading, use clues from the text, infer the meaning of the vocab words and then use each word in a sentence of your own.

8. Day Two: Vocab Focus Check your inferred definitions
chaos: complete disorder
grave: very serious (homograph)
revive: restore, to bring back to life
Exit ticket: read one of your own sentences (that defines a word in context) to line up for recess

9. Day Three: Piecing the ideas together
Essential Question: How can the human hand symbolize both hope and destruction for animals and their habitats?
As we read the poem, Same Hands:
Underline evidence in green if humans are helping
Underline evidence in red if humans are harming

10. Day Three: Turn and Talk
How does the poem portray the human hand as a symbol of both hope and destruction?
What does the author mean by the same hands that “crusade for laws to aid elephant’s freedom”?
What is significant about the way the poem is organized?

11. Day Three: Piecing the ideas together
How to Save a Baby Elephant
The Great Kapok Tree
The Amazing Penguin Rescue
Turtle, Turtle, Watch Out! and Turtle Watch
Oil Spill and Prince William

12. Day Three: Read Like a Detective
Find one sentence that shows how human hands are helping and harming. Write it on puzzle piece with page number.
Look for one powerful illustration that shows helpful human hands.
Green puzzle piece-helping
Red puzzle piece-harming
Use sticky notes to help you

13. Day Three: Piecing the ideas together
Share example from text.
Share powerful illustration from text.
On a sticky note, answer:
According to our puzzles, what do human hands have the power to do for animals and their habitats?

14. Day Four: Write like a Reporter
Let’s unpack the question together. What have you learned about the power of the human hand to help and harm animals from the poem Same Hands and the other texts we have read? Choose one puzzle piece and connect it to one line from the poem to prove your thinking.

15. Day Five: Poetry
Using the compare and contrast format of Same Hands, write and illustrate your own free verse poem using the symbol of the human hand to show how humans can impact animal habitats both negatively and positively. Construct your piece of art on white paper and make sure your illustration is a powerful image that symbolizes the importance of the human hand.
Let’s share!

16. Day Six: Musical Connection
Read the lyrics of Waving the Flag to yourself. Notice how this song connects to the texts we’ve read.
As you hear the song, follow along with the lyrics noting connections between the Same Hands poem and puzzle pieces.
How do all of these forms of writing (lyrics, poem, fiction and nonfiction) tie the idea of human interaction with nature together?