Earth Day with Winston of Churchill: One Bear's Battle Against Global Warming

Earth Day is honored around the world on April 22 for the purpose of shining a light on environmental programs and fostering community activism through a variety of different events and activities. Earth Day is the largest civic event in the world! It is celebrated around the globe by people of all cultures, backgrounds, and nationalities. More than a billion people participate in Earth Day Festivities each year. Up here in New England, it is 70 degrees today (although we still have patches of snow on the ground!!) but the warm weather reminded us that Earth Day will be here before we know it!

Earth Day is a great occasion to introduce the book entitled Winston of Churchill: One Bear's Battle Against Global Warming by Jean Davies Okimoto (Author) and Jeremiah Trammell (Illustrator). This picture book is a combination of narrative and expository text structures. The narrative, or story, is about polar bears planning a protest against environmental factors negatively affecting their habitat in Churchill, Canada. It contains all narrative elements of story grammar as well as perspective taking.

Additionally, the expository science facts about Global Warming, themselves, are explicitly stated as causes, problems and plans to solve the problems. Historically, the main character, Winston, reflects the personage and personality of Sir Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of England during World War II.

Here, we have mapped out the book and included ideas for using it with your students for narrative expository language development.

In this Advance webinar, Winston of Churchill: One Bear's Battle Against Global Warming is used to teach narrative and expository text and the connection to the Common Core State Standards. Technology aspects are introduced such as infographics about polar bears, live stream video of polar bears in their habitats, National WildLife Foundation videos about the plight of the polar bear population, and an audio recording of Sir Winston Churchill giving one of his most famous speeches.

Happy Earth Day!