Age Appropriate: Intermediate

Objective: Expose students to the world of mountains through the wonder of words to increase reading comprehension, enhance vocabulary awareness, encourage creative writing, develop higher level thinking skills, and renew within students a sense of joy, beauty, strength, and uniqueness that they share with mountains.

LESSON 1: "America the Beautiful"

Purpose: Identify Adjectives; Build Self-esteem and Awareness

Procedure:
1) Display pictures of various mountains and distribute copies of the first stanza of Katharine Lee Bates's poem, "America the Beautiful":

0 beautIful, for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountains, majesties
Above the fruited plains.

2) Discuss with students which words describe (adjectives) and what words they describe (In this example, all adjectives describe nouns. Adjectives are italicized and nouns are underlined.) Remind students that adjectives.answer the questions: how many, what kind, or which one and describe a noun or pronoun.

3) Encourage students to imagine themselves as part the mountain scenes; brainstorm---list adjectives that describe mountains within a mountain shape on chalkboard, dry erase board, or chart.

4) Demonstrate how students can make a modified Venn diagram by replacing the first circle with an outline of a mountain, replacing the second circle with an outline of themselves, and allowing the two forms to overlap. In the mountain, students list adjectives that describe only the mountain; in their outline, students list adjectives that describe only themselves; and in the overlapping area, students list adjectives that describe both the mountains and themselves.

5) Students use the adjectives in the overlapping area and other words that come to mind to write a paragraph, poem, or story using characteristics of mountains to describe themselves; they can even be the mountain: beautiful, unique, rough, strong, tall, as peaceful as a mountain meadow, unpredictable like an avalanche, etc.

6) Share works.

Participant Evaluation: As each student reads his/her writing, the audience (other students) will demonstrate active listening by writing or remembering examples of adjectives and the words they described from classmates' works. After each reading, suggested adjectives will be discussed and accepted according to the following criteria:

1) They answer the questions: how many, what kind, or which one.

2) They describe nouns or pronouns.

LESSON 2: "When I Was Young In The Mountains"

Purpose: Recognize author's purpose; Build Self-esteem and Awareness

Procedure:
1) Read to students "When I Was Young in the Mountains" by Cynthia Rytant (WV author).

2) Guide students to infer the author's feelings toward the mountains she grew up in and to compare and contrast her early experiences with theirs.

3) Allow students to create their own "memory books".

4) Share.

Participant Evaluation: Allow each "author" to share a similarity and a difference he/she has with the actual author. Encourage students to speculate how the author felt about her early environment and relate how they feel about theirs.

LESSON 3: Haiku

Purpose: A two-fold reason for reading: Information and Imagery

Procedure:
1) Reteach the form and requirements of Haiku: a three line, seventeen syllable Japanese-style poem with five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second line, five syllables in the third line, and nature as its subject. Remind students that the Japanese trim away all excess words so that only a lean image remains.

2) Distribute articles concerning mountains (from books, magazines, journals, newspapers, etc.).

3) Instruct students to look for vivid images of mountains or mountain life directly in the text. They must "lift" the haiku from consecutive words without changing a single syllable. Example from National Geographic, May 1972, "YELLOWSTONE AT 100 A Walk Through the Wilderness", p. 580:

superimposed on
the moose's hoofprints are the
tracks of a grizzly

4) Insist that the audience close their eyes as each student reads his/her haiku several times so that the image can paint itself on the inside of their eyelids.

Participant Evaluation: Students employ active listening skills to describe what images and emotions the halkus evoke and how they heighten their understanding of mountains and mountain life.

LESSON 4: "The Mountains Grow Unnoticed"

Purpose: Reflect on personal growth

Procedure:
1) Distribute index cards each with one of the words or definitions for the following words: unnoticed, figures, attempt, exhaustion, assistance, applause eternal, delight, fellowship. Allow the students to "play" Silent Student Scramble where each student takes a card and without speaking finds its partner word or definition. Discuss student selections and definitions. Students switch places if necessary.

2) Distribute copies of Emily Dickinson's poem, "The Mountains Grow Unnoticed".

The mountains grow unnoticed,
Their purple figures rise
Without attempt, exhaustion,
Assistance or applause.
In their eternal faces
The sun with broad delight
Looks long--and last-and golden,
For fellowship at night.

3) Ask students to close their eyes as you read the poem to them.

4) Encourage students to share their first impressions of the poem.

5) Allow volunteers to read the poem line by line or by stanzas. Spend sufficient time with stud&its' further ideas and Interpretations.

6) Suggest that students add an Idea or sketch that reflects their feeling about the poem to their Illustrated Mountain Journals.

Participant Evaluation: Discuss the following questions to help the students futher analyze the poem and examine their own related feelings:

1) Do you ever grow (body, mind, or spirit) unnoticed? To yourself? By others? Explain.

2) What color (literally or figuratively) is your figure when it rises (grows)? What does this color represent? Why?

3) Do you grow without attempt, exhaustion, assistance, or applause?

Consider each Individually.

4) Is your face eternal? How? Why?

5) Describe a time when the sun looked "long--and last---and golden, for (your) fellowship at night."

Lesson 5: "Great Things Are Done"

Purpose: To compare and contrast mountain life vs. city life

Procedure: 1) Display and read the following lines by William Blake:

Great Things Are Done

Great things are done when men and mountains meet;
This is not done by jostling in the street.

2) Discuss with students the meaning of the word, jostling, and the feeling the author conveys about what can be accomplished in mountains that may not be done or may be more difficult to do in the city.

3) Using pictures from magazines and pieces of poster board, have cooperative learning groups make collages---some of city life/some of mountain life. Suggest that each group create a saying, slogan, or sentence that they feel represents the theme of their collage and add it to the poster using words and letters from their magazines.

Participant Evaluation: Each member of the various groups will relate how a part of their collage depicts their theme. Encourage students to connect events or experiences in their lives with the ideas that have been raised and themes that have been presented. A panel discussion or a lively debate could culminate this lesson.

LESSON 6: Serenity in the Mountains and in Ourselves

Procedure:
1) Reteach the meaning of synonyms. Elicit from the student's synonyms for serenity.

2) Share the following verse by Pao-Tzu Wen-Ch'I:

Drinking tea,
eating rice,
I pass my time
as it comes;

Looking down at
the stream,
Looking up at the mountain,
How serene
and relaxed
I feel indeed!

3) Propose that students remember a time when they experienced serenity in a mountain setting or have them imagine what it would be like. Suggest that students tear pieces of paper into the shape of mountains and fill them with words and phrases that describe their feelings. Have students use these words and others that come to mind to recapture the moment in a poem modeled, if possible, after Pao-Tzu Wen-Ch'I's example. If they wish that may title their poems.

Participant Evaluation: If circumstances allow, take the students outdoors; a hilltop would be most appropriate. Let students get comfortable, within reason, in their outdoor classroom. As students share their poetry, others should try to imagine themselves in the setting. Discuss physical and emotional stepping stones In the search for serenity.

LESSON 7: "My Side of the Mountain"

Purpose: Identify with the main character's itinerary for Independence, detours through doubt, and search for self-reliance

Procedures:
1) Over a period of several weeks, read to and with the students Jean Craighead George's book, "My Side of the Mountain".

2) As the first-person narrative reveals Sam's mountain environment, experiences, and emotions, allow students to predict how Sam will react; decide If they would have acted similarly or differently; rank his adventures on predetermined criteria (determination, danger, common sense, skill, luck, etc.); and judge for themselves how they would have survived a year alone in a remote wilderness area of the Catskill Mountains.

3) At the end of each chapter, have students emulate Sam's circumstances, self-doubt, and successes with ones they've encountered climbing and surviving their own "mountains"---we all have our own lions, tigers, and bears to overcome! Have students save stones and sketches in Illustrated Mountain Journals.

Participant Evaluation: In a "mountain" setting (inside or outside the classroom), have students share selections and sketches from their Illustrated Mountain Journals. Encourage students to point out similarities and differences between their experiences and Sam's adventures.

Peak Performances: To enhance and extend the seven lessons, provide continual opportunities for students to preserve ideas and information in their Illustrated Mountain Journals, publish their writings and Illustrations, present dramatizations, and/or pursue mountain issues on state, national, and global levels.