Family+Letter+2

Here is a copy of the 2nd letter sent home.

Echo Lake Elementary School 19345 Wallingford Ave N.   Shoreline, WA 98133

10/23/11

Dear Parent or Guardian,

As I stated in my last letter, we are currently in the middle of our themed literature unit. At this point, we have determined that the theme of the books that we are reading is “Making a Better Life By Persevering.” Additionally, we are working on two related generalizations: 1) What does it mean to make a better life for yourself?; and 2) What does it take to get through difficult times? The students are having a great time with the stories. The first story that we finished reading was called //Trapped by the Ice//, which is a true story of an expedition to Antarctica in 1915. The leader of the expedition is Ernest Shackleton, and his ship gets trapped in ice off the coast of Antarctica and sinks. His men have to camp on ice floes until the current takes them to where the water is open enough, and from there the men have to take lifeboats hundreds of miles to the nearest land. From there, some of the men have to take a boat to the nearest human outpost, many more hundreds of miles away. Amazingly, all of the men survive the bitter cold and stormy seas, and they are eventually able to rescue the other men. The second book is also a true tale called //Brothers in Hope, the Lost Boys of Sudan//. In this story, the students read about a bunch of boys in Sudan whose parents were lost or killed in a civil war. The boys had to travel hundreds of miles, mostly on foot, to Ethiopia and Kenya to refugee camps. They had to avoid enemy soldiers and find ways to feed themselves by foraging and hunting. Many of the lost boys now live in the U.S. I am also currently reading another book in class, this one called //Crossing the Wire//. This book is fiction, and is about a 15 year old boy in Mexico who makes a decision to go to the United States to try and support his family. We have just begun this book, so I can’t let you know how it ends. I hope that your child is enjoying these books and the lessons that we are doing. At this point, I just wanted to remind you of the website where you can review what we are doing at http://mrsternsthemedlitunit.wikispaces.com. It would also be of great benefit to your child for you to ask him/her questions about the books. Once again, I thank you for your time in reading this letter.

Very Truly Yours,

Jon Stern

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