Questions to activate background knowledge:

Can you think of another time in history where a group of people have been treated unfairly because of the color of their skin?

Can you imagine being taken away from your family because of your ethnicity?

Why is the title so far from the sea when it looks like the sea behind them?

Why does the woman have spring flowers in the winter time?

Have you ever heard of World War II?

Who was locked up and killed during that war?

What is a spy?

Point of View: Who is telling the story?

Text-to-Self Connections: going somewhere that makes you feel nervous, making emotional connections

Inference: I am inferring that it is winter because they are putting on their jackets.  The wind is cold from the Sierra.

Setting: 1942, popular song: Don’t Fence Me In

Drawing Conclusions: Look at the location of Manzanar and draw a conclusion about why the author made the title “So Far from the Sea”

Mental Images: the field bigger than a football field, seeing it empty like erasing a blackboard, imagining he could climb on the mountain’s back and it would become a big eagle to fly him away, boat( a real American scout sail)  moving on as a way to say his grandfather had moved on, and so were they

Cause and Effect: Because Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the United States, the effect is “the U.S. was suddenly at war”

Metaphor: What could the author mean when he says the grandfather began dying the moment he was put on the bus and taken to Manzanar?  The author is comparing dying to being taken so far from the sea and losing his boat and freedom.

Metaphor: What is “moving on” a metaphor for as the family leaves the cemetery? a boat moving on, the family moving on to Boston, the family moving on and letting the hurt of the grandfather’s mistreatment go

Organizational Strategies: What did you notice about the way the illustrator organized the illustrations with the color pages and the sepia no color ones?  What is he trying to show? Can you think of any other text-to-text connections that show a shift in time?

Compare and Contrast: The way the camp looks before and after the war.

Text-to-Text Connection: Tree of Cranes by Alan Say is set in Japan and a mother is telling her son what Christmas was like in America when she was a child.

Synthesis: Can you think of other groups of people who are thought of as suspicious because of their heritage in our present day time or in the past?–Jewish people during WWII, slavery in the U.S., today’s airport security with certain names, appearances, the Muslim religion, the controversy in NYC about the Mosque being built near the 9/11 site?

Synthesis: Can you think of a time when you had to “move on” and let something go that has hurt you?

Before beginning, read the guide produced by the publisher which provides a background for understanding:

Author’s purpose: The author takes us into the world of a refugee and helps refugee’s to see that they are not alone.

POV: The story is told from Kek’s point of view.

Voice: We hear Kek’s voice throughout the story as we experience his situations from his POV.

Text-to-Text Connections: 14 Cows for America by Carmen Agra Deedy

Drawing Conclusions: We quickly draw the conclusion that Kek is new to the United States.  What text evidence leads you to this conclusion?

Mental Images: The reader is forced to make a mental image of Kek’s description in order to follow his thoughts.

He describes common things in unique ways without using the common name for it such as the flying boat for the airplane.

Characterization: Use the Describing Wheel to list Kek’s traits: Eleven years old, maybe an orphan, afraid, sad, brave

Symbolism: How is the title a symbol for the way Kek thinks of America?

Note about an African custom from Alan Cohen’s “Eyes on Africa” page on Facebook

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 by using their skin and body as a form for it to use.

Presidents’ Day: at the very end of the story, the Boo Hag shape-shifts itself into a penny.  Precious is almost fooled, but just in time she realizes the penny has the image of George Washington on it instead of Abraham Lincoln.  Precious’ brother had told her that the Boo Hag was not too smart.

Author’s Purpose: It might be to share a cultural story that teaches a lesson about not opening the door to anyone when a child is staying home alone.

Sequencing: Sequence the shapes that the Boo Hag took each time it appeared to Precious.

Drawing Conclusions: What evidence does Precious find that leads her to draw the conclusion that each of the characters that visits with her is in fact a Boo Hag?

Examples: Drinking the water, frog-like tongue, getting apron color wrong, being a penny with the wrong image

The author is an African American making this an authentic choice to read during African American history month.

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?

Text-to-text Connections: Miss Mingo and the First Day of School by Jamie Harper;  First Grade, Here I Come by Nancy Carlson

Text-to-Self Connections: leaving parents to go to school, being afraid to try something new; what connection did Jake make with the book Mrs. Moore read to the class?

Cause and Effect: Because Jake was afraid to leave his parents, the effect is that Mrs. Moore, his teacher, allows his parents to stay with him all day.  Because Jake would not let go of his parents, the effect is that he didn’t get to glue, have fun at recess, or do anything he needed his hands for all day.  Because he held on to his parents legs so tightly,  the effect is that the circulation was cut off to their legs.

Compare and Contrast:  Compare what the kids did who didn’t have their parents with them  to what Jake got to do at school.

Synthesis: What did Jake synthesize about school after he made the text-to-self connection with the dog in the book and his own dog?

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

Drawing Conclusions: When we draw a conclusion we should be able to go back and find evidence in the text to support it.  When Turk concludes that Runt has been right about being chosen to be a dinner is a great place to talk about drawing conclusions.

The little old lady decides that Runt is just the turkey for her.  Turk sees look in the lady’s eyes, the drool, the fork, and the roasting pan and concludes that the woman wants to eat Runt.

Cause and Effect: Because they realized that Runt had been right about the people coming to choose them for their dinner, and not to play football or dance, the effect is that they listen to Runt and dress like snow turkeys for the next holiday season.

Point of View: The story is told from a monster family’s point of view.  From the parents’ point of view, Frankie is the scariest of all of the family.

Voice: The voice of the book is that of  the monster parents until the end.  Then we can hear the voice of Frankie when he decides to accept himself for what he is.

Compare and contrast: Compare what monsters think is good with what people think is good.  Frankie’s appearance is frightening to them and they try their best to change it.  Frankie’s hugging and kissing them could be compared to them jumping out and saying “gotcha!”  Compare the Stein family’s  home decor and toys to what regular people like.

Compare a real family tree (Tree Map) with the family tree that Frankie’s parents show him.

Inference: We can infer that it was a bad beginning when Frankie was born on a sunny day.

Characterization: Frankie was not scary, had golden hair, white teeth, clear skin, and he bounces when he walks like a zombie.  His groan is squeaky.

Synonyms: What is another word that means the same thing as: resemblance, inspiration, and indeed?

Predicting:  What do you predict Frankie’s own kind of scary will be?

Text-to-text connections: Franny K. Stein series, Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich