Island of the Blue Dolphins

Karana, a young Native American girl, makes a choice between leaving with her village people on a rescue ship or swimming back to the island home to save her younger brother, Ramo. Ramo and Karana, for a short time, live together trying to survive the terrible winters on this island. Heartache after heartache, Karana not only loses Ramo to a pack of wild dogs, but even her attempt to leave the island in a leaky boat fails miserably. Her isolation from humans teaches her how to co-exist peacefully with the wildlife on the island and in the sea. Not only the birds, otters, and fish become her friends but even some of the wild dogs who were once her enemies. After many years, missionaries come to the island and Karana is excited about leaving the island. For nearly eighteen years, she had longed for this moment. Maybe now she can live in a humanistic world. This novel study provides teachers with a highly structured format for teaching language arts, as students develop a love for reading longer materials like novels. Various areas such as reading comprehension, vocabulary development, spelling, grammar, and writing are all entwined in this integrated approach, eliminating the need for teaching these skills separately. Activities are divided into three main sections: 1.Chapter Questions: For each chapter, students answer a thorough set of questions requiring answers in complete sentences. Reading comprehension is key as students must read and understand the entire book, in order to answer the questions. (One major strength of the novel study approach is that students must understand the novel or they will be unable to do the required assignments.) 2.Vocabulary and Language: Each chapter also includes activities dealing with such things as word meanings, use of the dictionary, spelling, parts of speech, antonyms/synonyms, syllables, punctuation and grammar . 3.Writing and Creativity: In this section, students apply what they have learned about language and grammar skills to write more effectively. Creative writing is the focus of this less-structured segment, allowing teachers more opportunity to incorporate their own ideas into developing creative writing skills. A puzzle activity is incorporated into this section to add more variety to the lessons.