Text-to-Text Connections: obeying parents

Text-to-Text Connection: Harold and the Purple Crayon

Large font and colorful, but simple drawings make this a super read aloud. The plot sequence lends itself to teaching predicting. A young boy is about to draw when his mother says that no one draws on this particular day, Doodleday. He disobeys and begins to draw a fly which flies off of the page and is huge! He then draws a spider to eat the fly, then a bird to eat the spider. The text-to-text connection with There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly will be noticed.  Young listeners will love the story and art.

Cause and Effect: Because he draws a fly, the effect is that he must draw a spider to eat the fly…

Because he disobeys his mother, the effect is the disasters that occur.

Predicting: What will he draw next? Do you think he will draw on Doodleday next year?

Schema: honey bees, making butter by shaking a jar, flour

Text-to-self Connections: baking with an adult, knowing the cow as the animal from which humans drink their milk

This is a very sweet picture book about a mama mouse and her baby girl as they go on an adventure to find the ingredients to find something “sweet and new to nibble” and made with “a little bit of love” which turns out to be a huckleberry pie. Baby mouse does not know what Mama is gathering the ingredients to make so as each ingredient is found, students could try to predict what it will be. After reading, students could practice sequencing the places that Mama went to in order to find what she needed. The illustrations support the text and are excellent.

Drawing Conclusions: What do you conclude that the ingredients will be used for?

Sequencing: What order did the mother mouse get her supplies? First: honey, second: flour, third: berries; fourth: milk

Text-to-Text Connections: books where a mother and a child do something together

Text-to-Self Connections: many students will identify with one of the seven characters

Text-to-Text Connections: Jessica refers to many great books that she is reading throughout the book. Students will relate to some of the titles. Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars is about a girl and her mentally handicapped brother, Charlie.  In this book, the students form a bond with a special needs class in their school.

The book is written from the point of view of seven different students in Mr. Terupt’s fifth grade class. Mr. Terupt is a first year teacher.  Use the characterization chart for each character to analyze their traits as you read through the book.  I think it would be fun to purchase seven additional copies of the book and let seven students take on the role of each of the seven characters in a reader’s theater. The seven student types are ones that students will connect with such as:

Peter who begins the story and is one who likes to play around;

Jessica, a new girl who is new to the area, whose parents are divorcing because the father found another woman;

Luke, a very intelligent boy, who consistently tries to achieve;

Alexia, a mean and devious girl;

Jeffrey, a quiet boy with a secret about how he had a younger brother who died, even though his parents had him to use his stem cells, and now deals with the depression of his mother;

Danielle, an over weight girl with parents who are extremely conservative;

Anna, a very shy girl whose mother is very young and had her while still a teenager.

Each chapter is told from the viewpoint of a different student.

The book is sequenced by months beginning with September and going through the school year.

Cause and Effect: One of the kids actions has a serious effect on Mr. Terupt, and the second half of the book is devoted to how each student deals with this effect.

Drawing Conclusions: Many opportunities can be found to discuss what conclusions you draw about each of the kids before you find out why they are the way they are from what you learn about their home lives as you read through the book.  The text makes you think about being negative towards kids because of their behaviors and comments before you understand why they are behaving this way.  Students will relate to these circumstances for many perspectives.

Voice: Include “voice” in the characterization of each character.  Their voice reveals their emotions.  Read some of the text aloud and have students tell you whose voice they hear.  Have them write something that sounds like the voice of each character.

Math: Mr. Terupt designs a math game to help students practice addition that Luke uses throughout the story.

Text-to-Self  Connections: getting haircut, fall illustrations

Sequencing: order the events in this circle story of:

leaving home

getting to shop

changing the pictures on the wall

cutting the different monster’s hair

cleaning up

going back home

Point of View:  The fly pages show the humans and their POV toward hair care at the beginning, and at the end, the illustrations feature the monsters POV.

Text-to-Self Connection: mind runs free, letting our imaginations run wild

Text-to-Text Connection: Both books are about kids who are outside at night with a full moon.

Compare and Contrast:

Similarities:  In both books the kids are out after dark, and in both, they are a little afraid of the dark, the full moon, and the night sounds.   Both books feature the oooo sound of an owl or the wind.  Both books refer to the  moon as an eye.

Differences: Ghost Eye is about a boy and his big sister.  Night in the Barn is about brothers and a cousin, all  boys and a dog.  In Ghost Eye the mother sends the kids on the errand.  In Night in the Barn, the boys think up the challenge themselves.

Author’s purpose: to create a connection with a scared feeling when in the dark at night and showing how the imagination can run away with itself.

Mental Images: The image of the “mind running free” in Ghost Eye, imagining scary things in Night in the Barn when the dog comes in at the end,  imagining the bare tree, the full moon, the owl’s eyes, the cat’s eyes

Inference: What makes you infer that the big sister loves her little brother more than she lets on  in The Ghost-Eye Tree?

Sequencing: Both stories can be sequenced with the events leading up to feeling safe again at the end.

Schema: letter “P”

Looking for the “p” sound?  This book is full of them.

Introducing Rhyming?  The characters also play a game where they think of rhyming words.

Sequencing: Sequence the events that led Piggle to find someone to play with him.

Text-to-Self Connections: feeling left out

Schema: stranger danger

Sequencing: Days of the week are the names of the children. Sequence four events that move the story forward.

Cause and Effect: Because the children let a stranger in, they were turned into food.

Drawing Conclusions: The mother asks each child what they would like from the store.  When a witch turns the children into food, the mother must draw a conclusion as to which child is which food in order to get her children back.

Classifying: Make a classification chart placing each child in a separate section or column. Write what they wanted from the store under their name. Add underneath each child what each child was turned into by the witch.  Ask students if they can conclude how the mother knew which food was which child by looking at this information.  The clue is that each child wanted an item that went with serving the food they were turned into.

Text-to-text connection: The Three Billy Goats Gruff has a troll that is thrown into the river and never heard from again.

Text-to-Self Connection: Parents tell children to not let a stranger in and to not “touch” fire when they are home alone.

Schema: selling what you make, seasons

Circle story: The story begins in the fall and follows the man and his family through a year as they make what they can on their farm to sell and use the money from what they sell to buy the things that they can not make.

Predicting: What do you think the Ox-Cart man will be doing the next fall?

Drawing Conclusions: What do you think the Ox-Cart man might buy with his money the next year?

Sequencing: Sequence  the farm chores and activities that the family does  throughout the year.

Synthesizing: What do you think the things that the man sold will be used for after he sells them?

POV: The narrator is the young girl in the story who tells the story in first person.  The day is hot, and everyone on the farm is hot and lazy except for Dad, then a big thunderstorm begins.

Text-to-Self Connections: Being outside when a storm blows in, feeling the air get cooler; hearing the whole house shake when it thunders; having a dog that gets scared when it thunders

Character Analysis: Dad returns to the rain to rescue their chicken showing his caring nature.  Dad also agrees that they can keep the kitten showing his loving nature.

Mom tells the kids to let the clothes on the line go and get in out of the rain showing that she is caring toward her children.

Cause and Effect:  Because of the storm, the effect is that everyone has to run inside.

Drawing Conclusions: Students will conclude that Maizey is worried about something because she pecks Dad when he is bringing her in and fusses about being in the house.  We might conclude that she is worried about her eggs or a baby chick, but a twist in the story reveals that she was worried about a kitten which they name “Thunder-boomer.”

Sequencing: The family is outside and hot, the wind starts to blow, they run to put up the tractor, get the chickens in the coop, get the clothes off the line, something white blows away, Dad gets Maizey in, Maizey acts unusually fussy, Scooter is scared, they see the underwear outside, it hails,  the rain stops, they let Maizey out and she reveals that she was worried about a kitten.

Text-to-Text Connections: Both books are about weather and the sky.

The rhymes in Sky will make a connections from nursery rhymes.

Text-to-Self Connections: Some kids will have seen a double rainbow, snow, fireworks, and tornadoes.

Sequencing: Notice in Sky that there is a sequence that leads to the storm, then following the storm the birds come back out again.  Use a Sequencing Chart as you read that begins with the empty sky and continues on the storm and then the birds and butterflies.  Sequence the changes in the sky in Twister and see if there are similarities in how each storm begins.

Compare and Contrast: What is real and what is imaginary on the pages that show things in the sky.  The first double page shows things like kites, airplanes, and balloons, and in contrast, the second set shows dragons, flying saucers, and UFO’s.  There may have to be a third category for Santa Claus and angels since some of us will have knowledge that they do exist.

In Twister, compare and contrast the yard scene before and after the twister hits.

Cause and Effect: Because humans burn chemicals that create carbon residue in the air, the effect is that the air has smog and smoke in it.

POV: In Twister, we hear the story from the POV of  Lucille, the girl.

Inference: Why do you infer that that Lucille starts asking Natt about his scars while they are waiting out the storm in the cellar?

Drawing Conclusions: What text evidence can you find that supports the conclusion that the kids and their mother were very compassionate toward Mr. Lyle?

Alliteration: the sound the porch swing makes and the sound of the thunder crashing.