The Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rain Forest (Rise and Shine)

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Filled with rich, glistening colours and abundant, carefully-studied details, The Great Kapok Tree is a rainforest packed into a book. She was attending graduate school at Yale University at the time and she wrote The Great Kapok Tree while on a train ride between New Haven and Washington, DC. The version cherished by the Maya is the rainforest version, which colonizes riverbanks and grows in several rainforest habitats.

It is believed that some kapok trees live for as long as 300 years, making them one of the longest living trees in the plant kingdom.Maya said, "We shouldn't take the ecosystem of other animals because if they took our ecosystem, we wouldn't be happy.

While he sleeps, the forest’s residents, including a child from the Yanomamo tribe, whisper in his ear about the importance of trees and how all living things depend on one another . The students' responses to the main idea for each page and for the whole story will determine who has mastered the skill of finding the main idea. We recognise that not all activities and ideas are appropriate and suitable for all children and families or in all circumstances. As the unopened fruit doesn’t sink inside the water, it is believed that the fruit of the tree floated from Latin America to Africa through the ocean. The man smelled the fragrant perfume of their flowers, but he heard no sound, for the animals were strangely quiet.The lesson uses the book, The Great Kapok Tree, by Lynne Cherry, and has students complete a graphic organizer to find the main idea of each page, and then tell the main idea of the story. The power of three suggests that when words, phrases and sentences are written in threes they are funnier, more satisfying and are more persuasive than any other amount of words. When the book was released in 1990, coinciding with the twentieth anniversary of Earth Day, Cherry told a reporter, "When kids grow up, in another 20 years, they'll be the people making the decisions. Your class will be learning to use inverted commas in this activity and recognise the difference between direct and indirect speech. Its fruits are harvested for their kapok fibers, used to stuff mattresses, pillows and life preservers: it is the tree that envelops some of the buildings of Cambodia's Angkor Wat.

The kapok tree does a great job at spreading its seeds, producing anywhere between 500 and 4,000 fruits at one time, with each fruit containing 200 seeds. I think that environmental-message books for kids do a disservice to them if they simply stop at showing a South American man (dressed in "Western" clothes) attempting to chop down a Kapok tree. The story of The Great Kapok Tree is told in the third person and follows the journey of two men that enter a forest. They just say, "If you chop down the trees, the roots will die, and then the rains will come, and the forest will turn into a desert. Having taught this book through TSFW for 3 weeks during a teaching placement the children responded really well to emotional dilemmas the man faced, while considering the animals and then environment.And, further, would he be cutting down the trees if there was not a market for the wood or land--perhaps we should look deeper, to someone else down the line, all the way down the line, to the end-consumer? Read the next two pages (when the man woke up and looked around at all the wonders of the rain forest) with the students. With her experience in both writing and volunteer work, Sri Dhanya is a well-rounded professional who brings a unique perspective and diverse skillset to any project she works on. Also, in the daylight, the kapok tree provides food and shelter for several different species like monkeys, frogs, birds, and various insects.

The lowland rainforest of its origin nation contributes to its usually massive size compared to other trees. He considers what the animals have told him, and decides to leave the tree standing, dropping his axe and departing from the rainforest a changed man. This lesson is designed to continue working with primary students to find the main idea as a reading comprehension strategy. Sunlight streamed through the canopy and strange and beautiful plants seemed to dangle in the air from the great Kapok tree. In Spanish-speaking countries the tree is commonly known as " ceiba" and in French-speaking countries as fromager.When they are done, have them share their charts with a partner finishing the sentence, "The main idea of this page is…" Once your students have mastered using the chart to tell the main idea of the different parts of the story, have them use the chart to identify the main idea of the whole story. Your class also have the opportunity to change the structure of sentences to add in an apostrophe to show possession. The monkeys say, "If you chop down this tree, you're going to chop down another one," an unintentional lesson in the slippery slope fallacy. The name ‘kapok’ comes from the cotton-like pile acquired from the seed pods of these trees, which is a Malay-derived name and is known by many other names in different regions. I loved the message of respecting nature and thinking of the bigger picture instead of just one's immediate needs.