Letters Home from Yosemite Written and Illustrated by: Lisa Halvorsen Visit the Author

Summary Yosemite National Park is an amazing place. In one visit, you can see giant trees, towering mountains, and interesting wildlife.

Study Skills  Genre: Narrative Nonfiction  Comprehension Skill: Main Idea  Comprehension Strategy: Graphic Organizers  Comprehension Review Skill: Fact and Opinion  Vocabulary: Suffixes

GenreGenre: Narrative Nonfiction  Narrative nonfiction tells the story of real people, places, or events. The narrator, or teller of the story, presents information in sequence. Notice this sequence as you read about Yosemite National Park.

Comprehension Strategy – Graphic Organizers TE 112  Using a graphic organizer can help you to understand what you read.  Examples of graphic organizers are webs, charts, and diagrams.  A sequence chart can help you see the sequence of an article and often you can fill these charts in as you read.

Comprehension Skill Review – Fact and Opinion TE 125  A fact is a statement that can be proved true or false.  Statements of opinion tell about a person’s beliefs, feelings, or way of thinking that cannot be proved.

Vocabulary Strategy Suffixes –ist and -ive Te 114  You can use suffixes to help figure out the meaning of words.  The suffix –ist can make a word mean “one who is an expert in____,” as a biologist, an expert in biology.

Vocabulary Strategy Suffixes –ist and -ive Te 114  The suffix -ive can make a word mean “’tending or inclined to_____,” as in active, which means tending to act.”

Question of the Week TE 66m  How does Yosemite reflect the unique qualities of the West?

Day 2 - Question of the Day  Why did Congress establish Yosemite as a national park?

Day 3 - Question of the Day –  How does the author support her opinion that Yosemite is “one of the most awesome places on Earth?

Day 4 - Question of the Day - Review  What might prompt someone to write a song like “This Land is your Land?

Research/Study Skill – Print Sources TE 133L  Print sources include textbooks, trade books, encyclopedias, dictionaries, almanacs, atlases, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, pamphlets and other printed sources.  Think about the purpose of each source when doing research.

Research/Study Skill – Print Sources TE 133L  To find information in a print source, think about its organization.  The table of contents, index, or headings show what information the sources includes and how it is organized.

Review Questions 1. How can you tell this was written to inform? 2. What is one way Yosemite is a unique place? 3. What are some impressive wonders in Yosemite?

Review Questions 1.What is the “time” setting of this story? 2.How did the author organize this story? Why do you think she did that? 3.What attraction did the she go see right after Glacier Point?

Fun Stuff  Yosemite for Kids Yosemite for Kids  Photographs of Yosemite Photographs of Yosemite

Vocabulary- Say It! glacier impressive naturalist preserve slopes species wilderness

More Words to Know altitudes formations reservoir earthquake eruptions volcano

glacier  a great mass of ice moving very slowly down a mountain or along a valley

naturalist  a person who studies living things

impressive  able to have a strong effect on the mind or feelings

preserve  to keep from harm or change; protect

species  a set of related living things that share certain characteristic and that can be interbred

slopes  and that goes up and down at an angle

wilderness  a wild region with few or no people living in it

earthquake  a shaking or shifting motion of Earth’s surface. It is caused by the sudden breaking of masses of rock along a fault.

eruptions  acts or processes of bursting or throwing forth

volcano  opening in Earth’s crust through which steam, ashes, and lava are forced out in periods of activity

altitudes  heights about Earth’s surface

reservoir  a place where water is collected and stored for use

Denali Nation Park in Alaska has more than 6 million miles of wilderness.

More than 650 species of flowering plants live in Denali!.

The park was established to preserve the land and the plants and animals.

That’s what the naturalist on the guided tour told us about this park.

We skied up the lower slopes of Mt. McKinley.

We could see a giant glacier looking like a huge field of ice.

The glacier was a very impressive sight.

The sequoia tree is the largest species of tree in the world.

There is less oxygen as you go up in altitude.

The river provides water to San Francisco by way of a reservoir.

The rock formations were beautiful in the sunlight.

Postcard TE 87g-h  A postcard is a brief message, with a picture on one side, sent by mail to friends or family.  Often a post card gives detail about a place you are visiting on vacation and describes your feelings about being there.

GREAT JOB!