Lesson 1

Title: What do you KNOW? What do you WANT to know? Where can you FIND the information? What did you LEARN?

Objectives:

• Students will be able to interpret a Hawaiian song into what they think it means.
• Students will be able to discuss in cooperative learning groups about the Big Island.
• Students will be able to demonstrate communication skills, and develop cooperation as a team effort.

Purpose: Focusing Event

The purpose of this opening activity will be to find out exactly how much information every student KNOWS about the Big Island, what they WANT to know about the Big Island, and to later find what they LEARNED from these lessons and their trip to the Big Island.

During this lesson the students had an opportunity to take a musical exploration using their imagination. They listened to a song about the Big Island in both Hawaiian and English and interpreted the songs in their own way. After listening to the songs the students reflected on the words and wrote their ideas on paper. Tey later gathered in groups, talked about their reflections of the song, and wrote their own creative pieces of their ideas (for homework). The title to this journal entry was, "What's in a song?". The students broke up into cooperative learning groups and wrote their K-W-Fs on chart paper with colored pens. As a group, they shared atleast one thing from their group charts. After the sharing session, every student copied their group chart into their learning logs as entry one. Journals were also inserted in their learning logs and shared at a later day. The learning logs served as a collection for the students to reflect on all that they had learned throughout the duration of the mini-unit.

Lesson 2

Title: Hawaiian Myths & Legends (about the Big Island)

Objectives:

Students will be able to find Hawaiian legends and retell them in groups to their peers. Students will learn to appreciate Hawaiian legends about their island home, as they hear various legends told in their groups.

To begin this lesson, the teacher shared a Hawaiian legend from the Big Island with the students. Then, the class had a discussion about what a legend is. We shared the importance of oral communication as a way of carrying on the Hawaiian traditions because the Hawaiian people did not have a written language. After the class discussions, the students went to the library to borrow their own books on Hawaiian Myths & Legends. The students also received a list of places they will be visiting on the Big Island. This list will give them more ideas on different legends they might be interested in finding. Every student was responsible for finding a legend and writing a summary on their own. On the following day, the students met in their cooperative learning groups (same as K-W-F group), shared their summaries of the legends they read about, and then voted on only one legend that they would like to share with the other students. Everyone in the group was required to learn that one legend, become expert storytellers of this one legend, and then, jigsaw with the class to share the legend with the others. This allowed the students the opportunity to hear 6 different legends in small groups and practice the Hawaiian means of passing on information, oral communication. After the students heard all the legends from the different experts, they wrote a short reflection of what they learned (ex: what they appreciated most, their favorite legend, and so on) in their learning logs.

Title: Letters to Big Island Destinations

Objectives:

• Students will be able to follow the writing process to manufacture a letter to the various destinations to find out more information.
• Students will be able to appreciate the importance of a properly composed letter and the responses from the various vendors and destinations.
• Students will be able to gain more information about different destinations on the Big Island.

To begin this lesson, the students reviewed the names of the places that they will be visiting on the Big Island. I started by reading a letter to the students that I wrote to them regarding the Big Island trip. Then, they gathered into cooperative learning groups and read various types of letters that were written for various reasons. They read a letter from a mother to a child in college, a letter from a young girl to her best friend, another letter from an employee to his employer, a letter from a credit card company to a customer, and a letter from a teacher to her students parents. Then, they analyed and discussed some of the differences in each letter. They also reviewed the purpose for writing their letter to a Big Island destinations and choose the best format to follow. After finishing this activity, the students choose one place that they wanted to learn more about. As a group, they composed one letter to that destination and followed the writing process to develop a final product. They were given some criterias that needed to be included in each letter. The criterias were as follows: names of all group members, some personal information (school that you attend, grade, some information about your class, school, and community, etc..), purpose for writing this letter, other places that you will be visiting, purpose for your Big Island trip, give reasons why you want to visit this place, and you need to request more information from this place (maps, brochures, price lists, etc..). A few days later, as a closing event, the students shared their letters with the class then, they mailed it off to the Big Island. After receiving the return letters from the various visiting attractions, the students added the new information to their K-W-F-L charts in their learning logs. This information will be shared at a later time so, the class can add it to their chart under L (What we learned).

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