Eve Bunting, Fly Away Home, Terrible Things, more
Lesson plans and teaching ideas

|Biography and Background| |Dandelions| |Fly Away Home| |How Many Days to America?| |Jing Woo| |The Memory String| |The Night Tree| |Smoky Night| |St. Patrick's Day in the Morning| |Terrible Things: an Allegory of the Holocaust| |Train to Somewhere| |The Wall| |Wednesday Surprise|

Biography and Background

Eve Bunting
Biography from Wikipedia.

A Video Interview with Eve Bunting
Links to short video interviews.

Dandelions

The Artifact Road Show
This strategy will work well with many books; Dandelions is among those suggested.

Dandelions
Summary, discussion points, and suggestions for activities.

Dandelions
Students compare modern houses with sod houses. Includes craft activity.

Fly Away Home

Fly Away Home by Eve Bunting
Summary, discussion questions, activities, and related books.

Fly Away Home by Eve Bunting
Activities to accompany this book. This file requires Adobe Reader for access.

How Many Days to America?

How Many Days to America?
As a post-reading activity, students explore their own family's background.

Jing Woo

Jin Woo
Suggestion for a post-reading letter-writing activity.

The Memory String

Creating Family Timelines: Graphing Family Memories and Significant Events
Students participate in read-alouds and discussions about memories and family. After this exploration, students brainstorm questions to ask family members in order to learn more about important and/or memorable family events. Once students determine a list of questions, they interview family members, taking notes on the events and giving each a positive or negative rating. Using their interview notes, students create a graphic family timeline which includes illustrations or photographs.

The Memory String
Suggestion for a post-reading activity.

The Night Tree

The Night Tree
A post-reading activity. Access requires Adobe Reader or compatible application.

Smoky Night

Peace Poems and Picasso Doves: Literature, Art, Technology, and Poetry
This writing activity would work well with Smoky Night.

St. Patrick's Day in the Morning

St. Patrick's Day in the Morning
Cross-curricular follow-up activities related to the Irish and St. Patrick's Day.

Terrible Things: an Allegory of the Holocaust

Exploring the Holocaust
The first 2 pages of this 5-page document are related to teaching Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl. Scroll to page 3 for ideas for introducting and responding to Terrible Things. Access requires Adobe Reader or compatible application.

Fighting Injustice by Studying Lessons of the Past
"This lesson for grades 6-8 uses Bunting's book Terrible Things: An Allegory of the Holocaust to begin a comparative study of the experience of European Jews during the Holocaust, Cherokees during the Trail of Tears, and Japanese-Americans during World War II."

My 3-Day Lesson on Courage
This unit uses both Terrible Things and Smoky Night to help second-graders learn about courage.

Terrible Things
These two lessons provide bookends (an introduction and conclusion) to a unit on the Holocaust. They require students to investigate and make decisions concerning human behavior before and after they study the lessons of the Holocaust. Prior to the word Holocaust being mentioned, the first lesson asks students to give advice to others dealing with the issues of speaking up and taking action rather than just standing by and watching. After students have studied the Holocaust, the second lesson asks them to re-evaluate the advice they gave at the beginning of the unit by reflecting on the lessons of the Holocaust and applying them to stereotyping, prejudice, and racism in today's society.

Historical Background
Lesson plans and other resources for teaching about the Holocaust.

Train to Somewhere

Train to Somewhere
Discussion questions, ideas for a follow-up activity.

The Wall

The Wall
Discussion questions and follow-up activities.

The Wall Inspires Letters to Veterans
Students listen and look at the illustrations as the teacher reads aloud The Wall by Eve Bunting. This leads to a lesson in which students write letters or cards to U.S. military veterans in a local veteran's hospital.

The Wall Questioning Strategies
A teacher explains her process using sticky notes to model questioning and making connections during reading.

The Wednesday Surprise

The Wednesday Surprise
Ideas for a follow-up activity.