Author’s Purpose: to share about the Rockefeller Christmas tree and Habitat for Humanity.

Cause and Effect: Because the father in the story gave from his heart to the men at the construction site, the effect is that the men wanted to help his family with their home.

Because the young boy was helped as a child with getting a home built, the effect is that he is willing to let his tree be used to help Habitat for Humanity to build a home with the wood from it.

Set in 1931, the out of work father of a family living in a shack has the idea of cutting some Christmas trees to sell in New York City. He and his son drive in one day and ask some construction workers who are building Rockefeller Center if he could park there and sell his trees. At the end of the day, the father leaves with money in his pocket and gives the extra trees to the construction workers that he visited with during the day who put the tree up there at the building site and decorate it with what they had. The next day, the construction workers surprise the family at their shack with extra wood and scrap wood to help them fix up their shack. They men end up building them a new home. The young boy in the story is given a claw hammer by one of the men to extract nails from boards they want to use on the windows. Years pass by, the young boy grows up, returns to live in the little house, and a man comes by from Rockefeller Center to buy a tree on his property that grew from a pine cone he had planted the day after his visit to the city to sell the trees. The tree meant a lot to him, but when he heard that the wood would be donated to the Habitat for Humanity to help build a house for a family in need, he knew it was time to give the tree to the Center. The story also includes historical information about how the men at the site in real life put a tree up in 1931 as a tribute to thank the Rockefeller’s for hiring them to work there. Since then, each year a tree was placed there for all to enjoy. An afterward about Habitat for Humanity is also included.

Text-to-Self Connections: Each Saint holiday from December 6th through January 6th is included. 

Text-to-Text Connections: Strega Nona’s Christmas

Big Anthony is once again the star of the show as he gobbles up the goats special turnips. 

Author’s Purpose: to share the culture of Italy and the special Saint’s days.

Drawing Conclusions: What do you conclude is the reason that Big Anthony gave his special meal to the goat?

The story is set in Calabria at Christmas time. The community celebrates the Feast of Sn Nicola, Feast of Santa Lucia, and several other special days. The food and customs of each day are detailed with the characters actions. The Eve of Epifania was extra special because they believed that animals may be able to speak that night. They wanted to feed them well. Big Anthony ate the goat’s special food so the goat eats Big Anthony’s blanket. Strega Nona gives a special blessing to the people of a dream of food which Big Anthony can not enjoy because he is cold and not sleeping well. On The Feast of Epifania Big Anthony finds the bean in the King’s Cake and gets to be king. Strega Nona will make him anything he desires. He requests the turnips that were for the goat that he had eaten so he can give them to the goat. Children whose culture celebrates the saint days will especially enjoy the story.

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

Also a connection with the Gingerbread Man stories as the stick is running from animals and people.

Personification: the stick is personified

Predicting: Ask students to predict what the stick man will be used for next as you are reading the story.

Because a dog grabs him, the effect is that stick man gets farther and farther away from his home.  Every situation where Stick Man is taken can be used as a cause and effect example.

Because Santa Claus rescued the Stick Man, the effect is that he is taken back to his tree.

Organizational Strategies:  Create a flow chart showing the stick’s movement throughout the story.

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 whereabouts of the ring?  What clues from the story lead you to this conclusion?  First she thinks it is in a tamale because she thinks it fell off of her thumb and went into the masa.  Secondly, she thinks Danny swallowed it.

When did Mother come to the conclusion that Maria was playing with the ring? The clues from the story indicate that she found it in the masa since she “scraped off a flake of dried masa”  from the ring.

At what point do you think Maria’s mother found the ring in the masa?  Maybe when she sent Maria to get her father to help?

Synthesis: What do you think Maria synthesized from this experience?  to tell the truth immediately? to leave other people’s belongings alone?

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 to wear long pants.

Point of View: the story is told from the young boy’s point of view.  Because his mother does not meet him at the door as usual, he infers that she might be mad at him for something.  He then wonders why she is acting so strangely making the cranes, digging up the tree, and being so quiet.

Drawing a Conclusion: The mother in the story concludes that her son has been to the fish pond because he is flushed, wet, and cold when he comes home.

Sequence the events in the story from the time the young boy gets home, to the end when he and his father build a snowman.

Simile: At the end of the story, the author compares the passing of the days and time to the snow that has melted away; they are both now gone.

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 evidence to support your depiction.

Loyal: She went to the rocky craigs to cut the tree that her husband promised to deliver to the church saying her husband was as good as his word.

Self-sacrificing: She cut up her wedding dress to make a dress for Ruthie to wear in the Christmas play at church.  She also used the nylons her husband mailed to her from Europe to make the doll for Ruthie that became the family heirloom.

Sense of humor:  She went along with the preacher about inferring that the people in the holler were hearing the heavenly angels singing on high the night they cut the tree.

Strong: She used the big saw to cut the tree and then loaded it on the sleigh.

Brave and Courageous: She knew how to “make do” with what they had by using honey instead of sugar, herbal tea instead of coffee, embroidering flowers over rips and tears and lowering the hems of Ruthie’s dresses.

Creative: She designed Ruthie’s dress and created the doll who looked like Ruthie.

Organizational Strategy:  the Flashback:  The story begins with the narrator saying the story happened the way that Ruthie told her.

Metaphor: The old woman was picking her geese for the snow

Simile: the road wound like ribbons