This six-week unit explores how geography and weather affect literature. Students will read poems about weather by Carl Sandburg and Robert Frost and discuss how poetic techniques shape interpretation. They will also read informational texts about weather and seasons in places like Kenya and apply that knowledge to the setting of the story Safari Journal. Class discussions will focus on how information from non-fiction relates to insights from literature. The unit aims to teach students that all stories have settings of place and time that can influence the plot, and how authors use specific settings and poetic devices in their writing.

1. Isaac School District No.5
ELAS Thematic Unit Overview Grade 4 – Unit 2
2012-2013
Unit 2: Literature Settings: Weather or Not
DURATION: Six Weeks
This unit encourages the exploration of geography as it relates to seasons and weather, and students discover how these settings are
represented in and affect changes in literature.
Students read contrasting styles of poems about weather, including Carl Sandburg’s “Fog” and Robert Frost’s “Dust of Snow,” and
discuss how poetic techniques affect the interpretation of poems. Then students read informational texts, such as “Kenya’s Long Dry
Season” by Nellie Gonzalez Cutler, and apply the information learned to their appreciation of the setting of Safari Journal by Hudson
Talbott. Students learn about geography and weather through a variety of informational texts. Class discussions will focus on the back-
and-forth relationship between information gleaned from the informational texts and the insights they develop from literature.
Essential Questions: Vocabulary:
How does the author's use of setting affect the context
plot of a story? explicit information
inference
How does the author’s use of specific poetic poetic devices: rhyme scheme, meter, simile, metaphor
devices affect our interpretation of poems? poetic terms: stanza, lines, verse
prediction
Essential Learning: setting
All stories occur in at least one place and at one
time.
The setting of a story may influence its outcome.
Distributed Resources Aligned to Unit 2:
Owen and Mzee: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship (Hatkoff) A Prairie Alphabet (Bannatyne-Cugnet)
Time of Wonder (McCloskey) Strawberry Girl (Lenski)
Can It Rain Cats and Dogs? Questions About Weather (Berger) On the Banks of Plum Creek (Wilder)
Underlined vocabulary indicates a Tier II word. 1

2. Underlined vocabulary indicates a Tier II word. 2