Fossils

• Invite students to read the title of the poem and look at the illustration. Ask students to explain what a fossil is, or share the definition with them (a bone, shell, or other trace of an ancient animal or plant that has been preserved). Ask: What can we conclude about fossils from the images on the page?
• Build background knowledge with the video “What Are Fossils?” (located in the Resources tab).
• Point out the word scrolls in line 3. Review its definition in this poem (rolled up pieces of paper with writing on them).
• Point out and read the bubble on the left side of the poem. Remind students to keep this information in mind as they read the poem.
• Ask a volunteer to read aloud the Up Close box for the class.

• Read the poem aloud, or play our Read-Aloud to hear a Storyworks editor read the poem.
• Ask students to underline words, phrases, or lines from the poem that they enjoy or have questions about. Invite your students to share what they underlined and why in small groups or in a whole-group share-out.
• Discuss the poem together by answering the questions that follow.

• In the first three stanzas of the poem, what four ways of communicating are mentioned? What do they have in common? (key details) Books, scrolls, tales, and speech are all mentioned. These are all ways that people share stories and information with one another.
• What does the poet tell us is older than the first words ever spoken? (key idea) The stories told by the fossils are older.
• Read Stanzas 5 and 6. What happened to the forests and the mammoth? (key details) The forests turned to stone; the mammoth was trapped in ice.
• The poet compares fossils to stories. Which words or phrases in the poem are related to stories? (author’s craft) Words include books, scrolls, tales, words, stories, and Once upon a time.
• In what way is a fossil like a story? (main idea) A fossil tells us about a time, an event, or a living thing from another time, just as stories can do.
• Read the final line. Why might the author have ended her poem in this way? (Hint: Think about where these words usually appear in a story, and notice the punctuation.) (text structure) The words of the final line, Once upon a time, typically are the first words that appear in some stories, such as fairy tales. And the poem has no period or any other type of ending punctuation. The author might have ended her poem this way to tell us that the stories of fossils are not at their end but at the beginning. We have more fossils to find and more to learn about the past from them.
• How does the illustration support our understanding of the poem? (text features) The illustration shows some of the things mentioned in the poem, such as various types of fossils in stone and dinosaur bones. It also shows that the fossils are located in various layers underground. The shoes at the top might belong to someone who will discover these fossils and learn their stories.

Distribute or assign the Poetry Kit, which will take students on a deep dive into the poem and offer opportunities for students to connect the poem with other stories in the issue.