Yesterday, I read Abe Lincoln Crosses a Creek: A Tall, Thin Tale (introducing His Forgotten Frontier Friend) by Deborah Hopkinson, to my Level 1 ELD reading group.
I used it to teach them a note-taking technique that also involved sketching and today we’ll see how they do on the retell. Before hand we brainstormed Presidents they knew ) Obama, Washington, Lincoln & Kennedy). We looked at a poster of all the presidents and they though some looked like girls and wondered why there were;t any girls. Go team!!! Some were saddened to learn that you had to be born in the US to be eligible to be president. This was a good book to introduce presidential discussions.
Another great Lincoln book I read earlier in the year was Abraham Lincoln & Frederick Douglass: The Story Behind an American Friendship by Russell Freedman.
True confession time: not having really paid attention to the title I thought it was going to be a book about the Lincoln Douglas debates. I like the way it compared & contrasted the upbringings of the two men. I didn’t really know much about Douglass, except that he was an excellent abolitionist orator. This gave me new insight into his earlier life and the relationship he & Lincoln shared. Although it is beyond the reading level of my Level 1 readers, it is a recommended read.
