Characterization:  Characterize the traits of a horse as each animal character shares a bit about horses.  He is told that it is a living thing, an animal, has legs, is friendly, doesn’t change color, does not lay eggs, is clean, is very fast, eats grass,  and does not have stripes.  Before reading or showing them the book have students draw a picture of what they think the animal would look like.

Personification: The wagon is personified.

Reader’s Theater: This would be a great book to use for reader’s theater with each student being one of the animals.

Drawing Conclusions: What is wrong with the conclusion that Roy came to about the horse when he finally found it?  Review the instructions that came with the saddle.

Summarizing: With the repetitive action in the story, this is a good one to briefly summarize.  Show students the summary in the CIP.

Text-to-Text Connections: Click Clack Moo, Cows that Type by Doreen Cronin

Use the cluster word web to describe the farm animals attributes.  Write farm animal in the center, then add the animal and their attributes in the extended bubbles.

Cause and Effect: Because Hilda Mae Heifer was hit in the head, the effect is that she has lost her memory about who she is and the sound that she makes.

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.

Inferring: The family thinks the Inn will infer that Marth is a person when they put her in the wheel chair.

What does the maid infer when she sees a very full Martha and a pile of bones on the floor?

What do dogs infer when they hear the K word?  What is a “kennel?”

Predicting: When Martha sees the frisby, what do you predict she will do?

What do you predict Martha is thinking when they all leave to have fun, and she has to stay in the room?

What do you predict the Inn manager is going to do with Martha when she asks about summer employment?

Personification: Martha, the dog, is given human traits.

Text-to-Text: the other Martha books

Text-to-Self Connections: Has your pet ever misbehaved when you have left it alone?

Synthesis: What does the comment that Martha makes, “I gotta be me” mean to you?”

Text-to-text connection: The Little Red Hen

Point of View: The story is told from the red hen’s point of view.  How does the mother hen’s POV change when her chick says what she is telling the other babies is mean?  Do you think she sees the situation from her baby chick’s POV?

Compare and Contrast: with the original story; both find a seed, one is wheat, and in this one it is a tree, etc.

Synthesis: When the mother hen gives the other babies a green seed, how could we see this action besides the literal meaning?  Could the seed be like an idea being planted in someone’s mind?  What idea might she be planting in the minds of the mother cat, rat, and pig?