We recently read one of the third grade required texts: Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan. It is a historical fiction book which is a heart warming story about family. We read it as a shared book experience and focused on character traits and how the characters change throughout the story. The chapters do not have titles so after we read each chapter together, the students created an appropriate title. I was amazed at how creative and insightful many of the children were. We had in-depth class discussions following each chapter. We used this information to notice how the characters change and then designed character webs. 
We also focused on vocabulary and looking words up in the dictionary. The students filled out sheets on assigned words and then presented to the class to help us acquire new vocabulary.
After discussing the importance of the settings (the sea and the prairie), we created a watercolor portrait of a visually pleasing scene from the book.
In addition, we watched the movie Sarah, Plain and Tall and made comparisons between the book and the movie. We concluded this book experience with each student writing a letter to William, Sarah’s brother, as if they were Sarah and had lived on the prairie with her new family for a year. The students seemed to enjoy this unit and you may want to pursue the sequels to this classic book for some quality additional reading!
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