Agenda – TreesDay 1 – Review Day 1-5 Agenda•Read quotes, underline, write, share out•Watch movie on trees•Read quote, write, share out•Devise Big Ideas and Essential Questions, based upon wonderings and thoughts on quotes.

•Day 2•Read Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree•Use a graphic organizer to compare and contrast student’s and boy’s attitudes about and use of trees.•Read MillionTreesNYC quote about what we can do. Go back and revise graphic organizer.

Agenda – TreesDay 3•Read Achieve 3000 article, “Do Trees Help or Hurt?” or “Does Nature Need Our Help.”•Complete activity, thought question, and poll.•Extended Learning – Watch video about Urban Ecology and what students are doing in class.

•Day 4 – Plan Needs to be Developed•Using your responses to quotes, the graphic organizers, work in groups and construct a presentation on trees.

•Day 5•Presentations with rubric.

•Go to and show Warm-Up Powerpoint, Images-Trees in Urban Environment.ppt

Reading and Responding• Read the quotes. Select one quote to underline and

write about.• Underline phrases you wonder about or find interesting

in the quote.• Write 3-5 sentences about what you underlined.• Exchange your writing with a partner.• Read what your partner wrote, and make a comment or

ask questions about what your partner wrote.• With the whole class, share what your partner wrote

and how you responded.• Whole Class Share of our thoughts about the quote.

Day 1 - Quotes on Trees

Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,We fell them down and turn them into paper,That we may record our emptiness.~Kahlil Gibran

Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven. ~Rabindranath Tagore, Fireflies, 1928

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. ~Willa Cather, 1913

Reading and Responding• Read the quotes. Select one quote to underline and

write about.• Underline phrases you wonder about or find interesting

in the quote.• Write 3-5 sentences about what you underlined.• Exchange your writing with a partner.• Read what your partner wrote, and make a comment or

ask questions about what your partner wrote.• With the whole class, share what your partner wrote

and how you responded.• Whole Class Share of our thoughts about the quote.

Big Ideas-Essential Questions (EQs)

Reflect on what you found interesting and your wonderings. • What big ideas do these quotes raise for you?• What essential questions?

Possibilities• Interdependence; Nature Gives, Man TakesEQs • What can we learn from nature? How does nature sustain life on

Earth? How can we balance human needs with nature’s laws?• OtherFocusing QuestionHow can studying nature teach us about being human?

Day 2. The Giving Tree by Shel SilversteinReading fiction.• L. O. Students will read Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree and

identify their own beliefs about and attitudes towards trees. • Students will compare and contrast what the tree gives the

boy in the Giving Tree, and what trees give us in our neighborhoods. Students will compare and contrast how the boy treats the tree and how we treat our trees, concluding with how we can make a difference.

•

Compare and Contrast what the tree gives to the boy in The Giving Tree, what trees in your neighborhood give you, and how you and the boy take care of trees.

The boy in The Giving Tree Student’s Name

What did the tree give to the boy, what do trees in our neighborhood give us?

How did the boy care for the tree? How do you protect trees?

What could you do to take care of neighborhood trees?Magnet StandardsSustainability, Sense of Place, Activism, Inquiry, Careers, Technology

Students investigate how to balance human needs and natural laws. Activism. Inquiry. Careers

Shared Reading - What You Can DoFrom Million TreesNYC Handbook

• We need your help to keep newly planted trees healthy and green!

• City trees face threats from both city dwellers and the urban environment.

• People throw trash at them and slam car doors into their trunks. • Pets use their beds as litter boxes. • Concrete and asphalt prevent water from reaching their roots and

air pollution damages their leaves. • But change is in the air! With tree keepers like you protecting,

nurturing, watering and beautifying, many more trees will grow and thrive.

• Revise the graphic organizer regarding what you can do.

Day Three – Achieve 3000 -

L. O. Students will read a non-fiction article on conflicting views on trees and answer multiple

choice questions.

• http://www.empower3000.com/• Search “Do Trees Help or Hurt?”• Assign to your students.• Do the Activities, Thought Question, and Poll

• Alternate/additional reading: Does Nature Need Our Help?

Day Three – Extended Learning – Trees in the Urban Environment

L. O. Students will watch a video, take notes, identify ways trees are important to their

neighborhood, and determine actions they can take to maintain healthy trees.

• Watch the video and look and listen for answers to the following questions:

Watch the video and look for answers to the following questions:

Question Answer

What is the ultimate goal of the tree project?

Why do the kids like this project?

What information do they have to collect?

Why do they have to find out the height of the tree?

What economic and environmental benefits do the trees provide?

What careers are these students learning about through this program?

What skills are they practicing?

After watching the video and answering the previous questions, read the teacher’s quote below and comment.

Quote Your comment on the quote.

“We need a cadre of young people who understand that great science will be done only through collaboration. So the young people … are able to see how technology can build communities.”

Watch the Video. Click on the movie reel. Move the bar to the middle of the movie,

“Trees and their impact on the environment.”

• For video, go to • http://www.teachersdomain.org/• Register. Our school is listed as JHS 217 ROBERT A VANWYCK• Join the group I created, Group ID: 4803• In the group, Bees, Fuel, Water… , Go to the folder, Trees.• Open Students Study Urban Ecology. It’s better to download

the movie, so you can expand the image, so don’t click view.• Click on Students Study urban Ecology, and click download.• Segment on trees begins at the halfway point of movie.

Day 4 – Group WorkDay 5 - Presentations

•

Sources

•