Schema: sticks, playing with sticks
Text-to-Text Connections: Over in the Meadow, an old rhyme about the animals in a meadow; the rhyme goes something like, “over in the meadow in the sand and the sun lived an old mother turtle and her little turtle one…” See the lyrics at: http://www.songsforteaching.com/folk/overinthemeadowlyrics.htm
Also a connection with the Gingerbread Man [...]
Schema: making tamales, admiring jewelry
Text-to-Self Connections: taking something without permission, not wanting to get caught, getting together with relatives for the holidays, seeing something and then remembering something you forgot about
Predicting: Predict what Maria is going to do when her mother leaves to answer the phone.
Drawing Conclusions: What conclusion does Maria come to about the [...]
Schema: origami, making a wish
Author’s Purpose: to share the experience of learning about Christmas in Japan.
Mental Images: The mother describes the lights and trees in California to her son.
Organizational Strategy: Flashback: the book begins with the narrator telling the reader that he had not been back to the pond since he was not old enough [...]
Schema: Christmas trees, theme of the White House Christmas tree
Author’s Purpose: Gloria Houston and her family grew up in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina; the historical fiction story depicts what life was like in the early 1900’s during World War I.
Characterization: Characterize the mother in the story and use example from the text as [...]
