I will use this novel to teach about the Silk Road as part of this unit. The novel follows a piece of blue silk from Chang'an, China to Rome, changing hands along the way to various traders who come from different parts of Europe and Asia. It is written in fairly simplistic language that kids will understand with moments of intensity that young readers will enjoy. I intend to use the book as a read-aloud, and will read for approximately 5-10 minutes at the start of each class period. The following links will take you to the PowerPoint presentations that I have created to accompany the reading of this book. I have broken the book up into four parts, with an accompanying PowerPoint for each part. The images that I selected come from vocabulary words, places, ethnic backgrounds, and objects that are mentioned in the book for which I thought kids might benefit from a visual image.

After reading each chapter, students will draw a sketch and write a brief caption of the main event in each chapter on a story board. Story boards will be used as a reminder of the events in the story to stimulate discussion.

PowerPoints:
Between the Dragon and the Eagle Part 1
Between the Dragon and the Eagle Part 2
Between the Dragon and the Eagle Part 3
Between the Dragon and the Eagle Part 4

General Silk Road PowerPoint that I've created which takes students on a visual journey along the Chinese portion of the Silk Road from Chang'an to Kashgar.