Touching Spirit Bear Literature Unit Amy Knight St. Michael’s College GSL 520 5/07 –Summer Semester

What is Touching Spirit Bear about? Click on the book to read a brief synopsis.

Cole Matthews is angry. Angry, defiant, Cole Matthews is angry. Angry, defiant, smug--in short, a bully. His anger has taken him too far this time, though. After beating up a ninth-grade classmate to the point of brain damage, Cole is facing a prison sentence. But then a Tlingit Indian parole officer named Garvey enters his life, offering an alternative called Circle Justice, based on Native American traditions, in which victim, offender, and community all work together to find a healing solution. Privately, Cole sneers at the concept, but he's no fool--if it gets him out of prison, he'll do anything. Ultimately, Cole ends up banished for one year to a remote Alaskan island, where his arrogance sets him directly in the path of a mysterious, legendary white bear. Mauled almost to death, Cole awaits his fate and begins the transition from anger to humility.

Literature Activities To make this story come alive, we are going to engage in a lot of fun, hands-on activities that will exercise both our minds and our bodies. We will play games, go on a web quest, build totem poles, and much, much more! Today, I would like you to briefly read about a few of our VERY FUN upcoming activities and catch a quick glimpse of one of the websites you will be visiting in the upcoming weeks.

Touching Spirit Bear Scavenger Hunt We are going to begin this literature unit by embarking on a Touching Spirit Bear Scavenger Hunt! This is a web quest that was developed by a teacher in Burlington, Wisconsin. We are going to “tweak” it a little because some of the websites are no longer up on the web. The websites we visit will help us to develop background knowledge that will be useful to us as we read Touching Spirit Bear. 1. Click on the bear to read a few of the questions that you will need to find the answers to on the author’s web page. 2. Once you’ve read the questions, click on the picture of the writer and see if you can find the answers.

Scavenger Hunt Questions Mr. Mikaelsen offers EDUCATORS some TIPS to help students write better. One of his suggestions is to “write about things that give you strong __________ __________. (2 words) To learn more ABOUT BEN you can read AN INTERVIEW posted on his site. In it he says it takes about how long to write a book? HINT: Look for the words in ALL CAPS on the website – they’ll help you find the answers!

Vocabulary Dartboard We will choose five words from each chapter that we think would be valuable words to know the meanings of. We will record the words and their meanings on a vocabulary chart and we will write them on rubberbands. Once a week, we will play a game testing your knowledge of the words.

Vocabulary Game (Cont.) You will pull a rubberband out of an envelope. If you know the meaning of the word(s) on the rubberband and can tell us what part of speech it is, you get a chance to shoot it at the dartboard. If your rubberband hits the correct part of speech, you win a point. If you don’t know the meaning, you can’t shoot. 1. Click on the clipboard to see the vocabulary chart. 2. Click on the dartboard to see a picture of our game board

NOUNVERB ADVERBADJECTIVE

Are you excited? As I stated in the first slide, this is just a quick glimpse of the fun activities we will engage in as we read Touching Spirit Bear. Come to class each day with your book and a sense of adventure !