Schema: Marines, miracles
Author’s purpose: The author is sharing his journey with Nubs because it is a miracle that he was able to get the dog from there back to his home in San Diego.
Because Nubs did not give up on finding Major Dennis, the effect is that Major Dennis did not give up on him.
Characterization: [...]
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: origami, making a wish
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 [...]
Schema: Christmas trees, theme of the White House Christmas tree
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 [...]
Schema: Three Little other stories, food
Text-to-text connection: The Three Little Pigs, Texas town of Laredo, the Spanish terms, Too Many Tamales by Gary Soto.
Sequencing: In both stories, the events follow a similar sequence, with the third house in each one being the strongest
Compare and Contrast: How is the ending of this story different from that [...]
Schema: Little Red Riding
Synonyms: Each page has a focus word printed large at the top of each page, and the word is used in context. Ask students to give you a synonym for some of the words as you read.
Carmine writes a haiku about her grandmother. Students may connect with writing their own haiku.
Inferences: 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 [...]
Schema: text-to-text connections with Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
Parody: copying someone’s style in a humorous way, making a spoof of something
Goodnight Goon is a parody of Goodnight Moon.
Compare and Contrast:
Similarities: same story pattern, same room design, same color of P.J.’s, both have snacks in their rooms, both have rocking chairs, both have red headboards, [...]
Schema: best way to make a loose tooth come out rhyming text
Cause and Effect: Because she has no money to buy Papa a birthday gift, the effect is that she is trying to get her tooth to come out so the tooth fairy money can be used to buy the gift.
Predicting: What do you predict [...]
Schema: What does creativity mean? How are you creative?
Voice: The author creates a great voice with the main character of this story. He leaves the “g” off of the end of the words and uses words unique to the character of this young boy. Voice is a difficult writing trait to explain and teach. Steptoe [...]
