Ms. Moreau's Literacy Blog

          This lesson focused on identifying environmental and community problems, understanding cause and effect, and creating solutions through collaboration. The lesson began with an icebreaker to build engagement and participation. Students were then introduced to key vocabulary, including advocacy, environment, pollution, social justice, and eco-friendly, using visuals, anchor charts, modeling, and discussion. Collaboration was built through partner talk, shared analysis, guided practice, and gradual release. Afterward, students worked with peers to brainstorm ideas and designed inventions to help keep Hawaiʻi clean. Students also explored advocacy and civic action through discussion and reflection. All students actively participated and remained engaged throughout the lesson.                       Students analyzed historical artifacts from the Library of Congress using the “I See,...

     Students learned how life in the past compares to life in the present by analyzing primary sources and exploring Hawaiian culture through music, dance, and interactive read-alouds. They compared past and present life in Hawaiʻi using informational texts and folktales, like  Kapaemahu by Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, along with the nonfiction text Hawai‘i by Alaka‘i Swamp. Students also compared their own culture to Hawaiian culture by focusing on language, customs, and traditions, and they demonstrated their thinking through a Venn diagram and a hands-on craft. They also explored how human needs and wants influence cultural change, and created traditional Hawaiian leis using both primary and secondary sources.      Students began the lesson with an icebreaker and vocabulary charades, where they actively participated and practiced key terms in a fun, movement-based way.              Then the students completed a...

        Students learned how people, places, and environments affect economic decision-making by looking at goods, services, and resources from the past and present. They practiced telling the difference between natural, human, and capital resources and discussed how scarcity and surplus affect choices. They also learned how consumers and producers interact in a community.                                                           Students used primary sources to see how economic practices in Hawaiʻi have changed over time and compared ideas using H charts and Venn diagrams. Key vocabulary included currency, needs and wants, scarcity, surplus, goods and services, natural resources, and consumers, and it was taught using visuals, anchor charts, and repeated practice.      Students were very engaged, e...