T is for Tar Heel- Historical Fiction

            T is for Tar Heel by Carol Crane, is such a great book for learning North Carolina History.  It starts off with letter A and goes all the way through the alphabet to letter Z talking about different landmarks of North Carolina.  For example for the letter A they talk about the Appalachian Mountains, and Q for Charlotte North Carolina, which is known as our Queen city.  In this book they give a little paragraph with the letter and what it stands for and then they go further to give more detail about that certain place and how it came about.  To me this is such a great book because it really opened my eyes to how important our state is.  For example some other letters that really stood out to me were, X, which stands for railroad crossings which is linked with the Tweetsie Railroad and Z for Zoom Zoom Zoom which is to represent NASCAR which North Carolina is home for.  This is a great book to read to students because it is important that students learn about where they live and special parts it has.  For example there are so many fans of NASCAR and I think its pretty cool to say that my state is home for it!  Another great thing about this book is students can relate to it as they read, or at least I know I could.  There were many things mentioned in the book that I had seen or at least heard of and it was cool to be reading about them and comparing them to what I already knew.  Also, there are many facts this book gives that have allowed me to understand my state better and what it is all about.  In fourth grade students are focused on learning about North Carolina so this book would be a great one for them to get facts from.  As a teacher I would read this book together as a class. Each day I would read a new letter and have that be what we focused on that day.  There are many activities that can come form this book.  One activity would be to have students make their own alphabet book with North Carolina facts or interest that they have.  The students could use knowledge that they already know or if they needed help go to the library and research more North Carolina facts in books and online (at protected websites).  This would be great for students because it would be helping them learn different research techniques which they will need when they have to start doing research papers, and it is incorporating technology, which I think is very important to do in schools these days.