Text-to-Text Connections: Both books are about teachers and what they do at school; Bartholomew and the Oobleck by Dr. Seuss.

Compare and Contrast: What teachers do during school with what they do after the kids leave.  Match  teachers who are at your school with teachers in the books.  Who is the scientist?

Text-to-Self Connections:  Some students may have made the slime that the teachers made.

Drawing Conclusions: Can you draw some conclusions about teachers after reading these two books? (they like to have fun and enjoy pets)

What evidence from the text led to your conclusion?

Internal Consistency: Miss Fry is predictable in her response to each child.  What would be something she could do that would be inconsistent with her mannerisms?

Predicting: Predict what the parent will use as the reason for asking if the pet may stay at school in Teacher’s Pets.

Inference: Why do you infer that the student brought a sponge for a pet?

Schema: ducks, getting lost, or figuring out which way to go

Compare and Contrast (Characterization)Ruby and her siblings:

Siblings: Big Bold Adventurous/ Ruby: Small, Steady, Slow to tried new things

The siblings go on an adventure:

1. through the edge of the reed beds
2. past a waterfall
3. to the middle of the reed beds
4. through a winding water way
5. to the far side of the reed beds
6. to the grassy bank

On the way Ruby took her time and noticed:
1. waterfall
2. water lilies
3. bright purple flowers
4. willow tree
5. the black storm

Text-to-self: When it lightning and thunders suddenly, do you ever jump up and run around and feel scared?

Season: Spring

Senses: feel warm sun, see flowers, hear waterfall and thunder

Cause and Effect: Because Ruby notices things, the effect is that she knows how to get back home.

Sequencing: What order did she notice the landmarks?
1. waterfall
2. water lilies
3. bright purple flowers
4. grassy bank
5. willow tree
6. black storm

Internal Consistency: Would Ruby rush into anything before the others?

Questions: What does Ruby do in her own time?  Is the duck’s name Ruby?  Her mother says she is small and precious. Have you heard of a jewel called a ruby?

Characterization: List all of Ruby’s traits.

Word choice: Directional words such as upon and beside.  Put you hand beside you head.  Put your hand upon your head.

Counting: Count the eggs.

What can we infer is the reason a mother duck would sit on her nest in the howling wind and driving rain?

Text-to-self connections: Do any of you have brothers or sisters who do things before you?

Compare and contrast Ruby and her brothers and sisters:
Her brothers and sisters do things at the expected time.  Ruby does things when she is ready which is usually after her brothers and sisters do it.

Sequencing: Sequence the skills that Ruby learns.

Synthesis: Are all kids the same and do things at about the same time?  Share a personal example of something you have seen others figure out how to do before or after you.

Text-to-text with other Ruby book and with Lucy Goose Goes to Texas by Holly Bea.

Schema: Following directions, why it is important

Drawing Conclusions: The cats draw the conclusion that it is ok for them to pick a flower.  What is the flaw in their reasoning?

Predicting: What do you predict the cats will do when they come to the tree? The bag?

Cause and Effect: Because the cats didn’t follow directions, the effect is they went into a bag which was a trap.

Synthesis, Internal Consistency: Why do the cats follow directions about not crossing the road?  What is their reasoning?

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 directions, the effect is that his gift is ruined.

Predicting: After each gift, predict what Epossumondas will do with the next gift that his Auntie gives him.

Predict what Epossumondas will do when his mama tells him, “…you be careful  stepping on those pies!”

What did his Mama really mean?

Text-to-self connections:  Ask students if anyone has ever lost a gift or  broken a gift.

Text-to-text connections:  Amelia Bedelia stories where Amelia takes words literally.  See Epossumondas trying to pin the pin on his own tale, hanging from the tree instead of hanging the balloons, and being careful to step in the pies.

Historical fiction: The fictional story is based on the true life story of Mary Ann Goodnight who lived in the Palo Duro Canyon in 1876.  Readers see what it is like to live in a dugout and take care of animals.

Characterization: List everything about Molly; the author has her describe herself physically as well as share her traits such as her stubborn streak.  For internal consistency discuss things that Molly would or would not do that would go with what we know of her.

Setting: Palo Duro Canyon in the panhandle of Texas

Six Traits of Writing: great selection for voice; told from the POV of a woman who worked around her house surrounded by wild buffalo; “fixin’ to turn a profit” p. 7 and many other Texas ways of speaking create the voice of the main character.

Metaphors: the sounds the buffalo make are compared to the sounds of music; “reveille of roosters, choir of crows, chorus of coyotes, music of the buffalo” p. 1

Simile: There are many examples similes such as “heat fell as heavy as an angry fist, grass cracked like glass” p. 8

Compare and Contrast: Use the many similes to compare and contrast how the 2 things in the similes are alike in only one way.

Cause and Effect: Because the hunters want to “turn a profit on hides and hooves” they nearly wipe out the buffalo.

Because Molly loves the buffalo, she nurtures the orphans until she has a herd.

Text to text connection with The Empty Pot by Demi.  In both stories the main character is rewarded for his honesty.

Graphic Organizers: In Juan Verdades it would be helpful to use a graphic organizer as the story is read to keep the characters straight.

Arturo: asked for the bet, accepts the ranch as the pay off of the bet, asks for the condition that he could try anything in order to win, has a wife and daughter who is Araceli

Ignacio: Juan’s boss, says he will bet his ranch that Juan will not tell a lie

It was Araceli’s idea to stay on Ignacio’s ranch.

Predicting: What do you predict Araceli’s plan is? I predict Araceli is making Juan’s breakfast because she wants to try to make him fall in love with her.

Predicting: Arturo tells Ignacio that Juan has given his daughter the apples and says that Juan will lie about it.  Do you predict that he will lie?

Inference: What reason does Araceli ask for all the apples? I am inferring that she is asking for them so that Juan will be in a position to lie about what happened to them.

When Juan gives her the apples, what do you infer that Araceli wants to talk about with Don Ignacio?

Drawing Conclusions: If you draw the conclusion that Juan will not lie, what evidence from the story supports this?  Juan has trouble lying because he is always honest as in Ignacio’s description of him.  When Juan practices lying to the jacket hanging on the post, he can not lie.

Riddle: Juan’s first answer is that some fool picked the apples and gave them away.

Juan’s second answer is that he, himself gave them away (fool’s father is my father’s father’s son)

Juan’s third answer is the fool, himself, if he had a child would call his father “grandfather.”

Araceli’s secret talk with Ignacio comes out into the open when her father, Arturo, loses the bet since Juan was honest, and must give his ranch to Ignacio.  Ignacio says instead of taking it for himself, he wants to give it to Juan.  Juan then is a land owner and is able to ask for Araceli’s hand in marriage, thus keeping the ranch in her family.

Summary: with all the twists and turns, this story would be a good one for teaching summary and sequencing.

The Empty Pot by Demi is a much simpler story, but shares the same theme as Juan Verdades.  The emperor asks the children to grow a fabulous flower from the seeds he gives them.

Inference: The children and their families infer that the best flower will be used to determine which child will be the next emperor; but, in reality the contest was to judge honesty.  All of the seeds were boiled and could not possibly grow.  Only Ping returned a year later with an empty pot, thus proving his honesty and worthiness to be the next Emperor.

Text to self connection: Many of the children will identify with Ping when his father tells him not to be ashamed if he did the best that he could do.

Inference: What do we infer that Ping is feeling when we see him returning with his empty pot? The children will say embarrassment, worry, and sadness.

Drawing Conclusions: What conclusion can we draw about the Emperor’s motives to have the children grow flowers to see who he would name as his successor?  We can infer that he was trying to see which ones were honest.

Seasons: In The Empty Pot the story covers a year and the illustrations reflect the seasons.

Cause and Effect: Because the main characters were honest, they were rewarded.

Figurative language, personification, and mental images are the strong points of this book.

The author compares snow to a shy friend.  Another passage talks about how children love snow and the snow loves them back by giving them angel wings and new snowman friends.

One very touching thought is that the snow reminds us of  how nothing is forever except memories.  It is paired with a young girl and and older grandmotherly woman.

Internal Consistency: Students could use this story as a model and rewrite it with rain, wind, or sunshine as the main idea.

There is a text-to-text connection with Snow Sounds: an Onomatopoeic story by David Johnson.

In this retelling of a folktale from India, a very greedy cat demonstrates his greed by eating everything.

Sequencing could be used by sequencing the order of what he eats.

Cause and Effect:  Because cats eats too much, the effect is that he gets fat and gets cut open.   Another effect is that he wants to be less greedy and realizes that the parrot really is a friend worth having.  Students enjoy this humorous story.

Predicting: Predict what the cat will do with each scene.  Repeat the refrain of “Gobble, gobble, slip, slop” each time it comes up.

Internal Consistency:  Since this is a folktale from India, and folktales are retold to teach the values of a culture, what values do you think this story is teaching?  I think this story is teaching people to be considerate of others, to share, and not to be greedy.

Synthesis: Retell the same story with a setting and characters from a different culture.

Schema: needing things, gardening, being lonely

Text-to-Self Connection: eating potatoes

In One Potato, Two Potato, the author retells an old folktale from China with an Irish twist.

Text-to-Text Connection: The old couple in the book are named Mr. and Mrs. O’Grady. A previous book, Two of Everything by Lily Toy Hong, tells the same folktale using Chinese characters. This is an example of a text-to-text connection.

Cause and Effect: Because they put one thing in the pot, the effect is that the magic pot makes two of everything. This might be a fun way to introduce multiplication.

Predicting: Ask students to predict what will come out of the pot next.

Compare and contrast: Ask students to compare and contrast the two versions of the story.

Internal Consistency: Ask students to rewrite the story with a theme from a different country such as Mexico or Africa. Research what type of pot might be found in each country. What type of items from a particular setting could fall into the pot?

Second and third graders really enjoy this story.