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: 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: sheep, wool, sweaters, cloaks, the invisible cloak in the Harry Potter stories
Text-to-Text Connections: These two books make a big connection in that they both talk about how wool is used to create a garment. Charlie shares more technical information about the process. Red Berry shows how the words used to create fabric can [...]
Making Thinking Visible: The terms I am explaining below work together to create connections that will help young children to increase their reading comprehension. For years we have taught reading in abstract terms and many children do become great readers by being exposed to books and reading. Some of us need something more concrete to [...]
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: math, school, Boston terriers
Text-to-Self Connections: homework, eating jellybeans
Author’s Purpose: The author uses her story and the events in it to explain the mathematical concept of probability.
Predicting: Have your students predict along with the students in the book.
Summarizing and Synthesis: Ask students to summarize the story and explain what they have synthesized about probability.
Schema: stew, Texas, tumbleweeds
Text-to-Self Connections: making vegetable soup
Text-to-Text Connection: The Little Red Hen, Armadilly Chili by Helen Ketteman, Stone Soup, Duck Soup by Jackie Urbanovic
Cause and Effect: Because Rabbit is so persuasive, the effect is that he motivates the others to bring some ingredients for the soup.
Predicting: What do you predict the animals will bring [...]
Schema: chili
Text-to-Text Connection: Little Red Hen
Cause and Effect: Because the animals did not want to help Miss Billie, the effect is that she is not going to allow them to eat the chili.
Because the other animals felt bad, the effect is that they made some dishes to take to Miss Billie’s to contribute to the [...]
Schema: Frankenstein, Halloween, having a new baby in the family
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 [...]
