Schema: stories that teach a lesson, folktale, stranger danger
The story is written as a modern day folktale featuring the Boo Hag from the Gullah culture of South Carolina. The Boo Hag is a legendary spirit or shape-shifter that wants to live in another person’s body, or it is also described as riding a person [...]
Schema: ice from the fridge, icebergs
Text-to-text Connections: Gingerbread Man stories, stories where characters are being chased
Compare and Contrast: the animals that want to eat or cool off with the ice cube to characters in other versions of the Gingerbread Man. Compare the whale with the fox in the original story.
Sequencing: Sequence from the last animal [...]
Schema: turtles, desert settings, Grandma’s house looks like a sand dome
Text-to-text connection: other retellings of Little Red Riding Hood
Predicting: What do you predict the animals will do in order to save the turtles from the coyote?
Cause and Effect: Because Tortuga’s friends made the noise at Tortuga’s grandmother’s house, the effect is that Coyote is frightened [...]
Schema: folktales, purpose of folktales
Author’s purpose: the original author’s purpose may have been to illustrate what happens when we don’t think ahead or make a plan
Drawing Conclusions: What conclusion do you think Henny Penny came to, and what evidence from the story supports it?
Because the fox sneezed, the effect is that the animals were expelled [...]
Schema: Three Little other stories, food
Text-to-text connection: The Three Little Pigs, Texas town of Laredo, the Spanish terms, Too Many Tamales by Gary Soto.
Sequencing: In both stories, the events follow a similar sequence, with the third house in each one being the strongest
Compare and Contrast: How is the ending of this story different from that [...]
Schema: Little Red Riding
Synonyms: Each page has a focus word printed large at the top of each page, and the word is used in context. Ask students to give you a synonym for some of the words as you read.
Carmine writes a haiku about her grandmother. Students may connect with writing their own haiku.
Inferences: the [...]
Schema: kite flying; emperor is like a president or ruler
Text-to-Self Connection: being a 4th grader, flying a kite, wanting father’s love and attention
Poetry: Haiku; 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables, but originally a Japanese poetic form about nature
Mental Images: Try to make a mental of image of the wind troubling the waters of a still [...]
Schema: Louisianna, bayou, folktale, baking soda
Colloquialisms: swaney, scoot over, sody sallyraytus, lickety-split, dillydally, Catawampus, hissy fit, soppin’ mad, nervous as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs, skedaddled, flabbergasted, thumpin’ gizzards, patootie, gooder ‘n’ grits
After you say each of these colloquialisms as you are reading, have students repeat them right after you. It [...]
Schema: possums, playing possum, marsupials, folktales
Genre: Folktale; noodlehead story which is a silly, harmless story
Internal Consistency: Epossumondas just follows directions, but he doesn’t think about the cause and effect of his actions. Do you think Epossumondas would ever disobey his mama or his auntie?
Cause and Effect: Because Epossumondas doesn’t think and just follows his latest [...]
Schema: What’s in your schema about a folktale? The story represents a value of the culture. The setting and names are usually related to the country of origin. Think about whether you would you tell a lie to gain something for yourself such as being named Emperor or winning the love of someone?
Text to text [...]
