Learning About the Iroquois

We are reading about a group of people. They are called the Iroquois.

We want to learn new things. We have questions about the Iroquois.

We ask things like: How did they use nature? How did they work? How did they play? What traditions do they have? Traditions are things a group does that stay the same over time.

Learning New Words

We are reading a book. It is an informational text. That means the book teaches us facts.

Books like this have special parts. We call these parts text features.

Text features help us find facts fast.

Finding Text Features

We look through our book. We find special parts.

We find headings. A heading is a title for one part.

We find a glossary. A glossary tells us what hard words mean.

We find captions. A caption tells about a picture.

We find an index. An index helps us find pages fast.

We find sidebars. A sidebar gives extra facts.

We find bold words. Bold words look darker and thicker.

We find italic words. Italic words lean to the side.

We find a pronunciation guide. It helps us say hard words.

Working Together

We look at other books too. We check for the same text features.

We work with a partner. We find more text features together.

We make a chart. The chart is called Informational Text Features.

We write what each feature means. We write why it helps us.

We find examples in our books.

Reading and Thinking

We read pages from our book. We listen and follow along.

We find an answer to our question! We learn how the Iroquois used nature.

We find a new word. The word is impressed.

We keep reading. We learn that Thomas Jefferson liked Iroquois ideas. He used their ideas to help write the U.S. Constitution.

Now we understand. Impressed means you really like something and learn from it.

We keep reading. We think about a sentence in the book. It says, "The people of the longhouse have survived."

We think about what this means. We talk with a partner.

Practicing with Text Features

We reread our book. We look for text features again.

We fill out a paper about what we found.

What We Learned

We think about today. Text features helped us understand our book.

We talk about why text features matter. We add our best idea to our class chart.

Homework

We finish reading Chapter 1. We keep thinking about how Iroquois life was different long ago.