Text-toText: The Sea, the Storm and the Mangrove Tangle by Lynne Cherry

Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai by Claire Nivola

So Far From the Sea by Eve Bunting

The author uses the pattern of “This is the house that Jack built” to build the story page by page. In smaller print, more detailed information is provided and supported by a double page collage illustration. The subject of the book, planting mangrove trees near oceans that border dry, foliage free soil, is a project that Dr. Gordon H. Sato conceived after his studies as a biologist.  This book shows how the mangrove tree can help people as well as fish.   The Manzanar Project

Author’s purpose: Are you informed or persuaded after reading this one? I feel like I was both, but definitely persuaded to share this Manzanar Project.

The goose man is Konrad Lorenz, an Austrian born doctor who devoted his life to the study of ethology, an animal behavior involving instinct. This focus of this book is on the his work about geese and how they communicate with different types of honks and how they imprint on the first living creature they see.  Konrad learned how to imitate the goose honks to communicate with them. He had several pets throughout his life, and he won the Nobel Peace Price in 1973. The lively illustrations and amount of text on the page makes this book a very interesting read aloud that students will enjoy.

Author’s purpose: to share information about a famous scientist

Cause and Effect: Because Konrad was the first creature the baby goose saw, the effect is that the goose imprinted on him.

Drawing Conclusions: What conclusions does Konrad draw from observing the geese?

Mental Image: Several remarks are made in the book about the mess the animals made in the house.  Can you make a mental image of what a mess a monkey or a goose inside the house would make?

Text to text connection: 10 Things I  Can Do to Help My World by Melanie Walsh

D.W., a preschooler, is concerned because she infers that the project Arthur is working on at school is making his hands, and those of her father, and Arthur’s  friend, Buster, turn green. The reader will conclude that it is the paint they are using by carefully looking at the pictures in the book. This is a great story to teach inference to young readers. Once again, with an eagle eye, the reader will find the names, Tolan, Tucker, Isabella, and Skye, Brown’s sons and grandchildren, scattered through the illustrations. This book would be great to pair with a nonfiction book for Earth Day in April.

Inference: D.W. infers the reason that Arthur’s hands are green.

Cause and Effect: Because Arthur is using green paint, the effect is his hands are stained green.

Text-to-text connection: The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry

Author’s Purpose: persuade readers not to cut down the Mangrove tangles

Cause and Effect: Because the propagule falls off the mangrove tree, the effect is that a new mangrove tangle begins. 

Drawing Conclusions: The fisherman drew the conclusion that he should not cut down the mangrove tangle to make a shrimp farm because of what the other fisherman told him.  He was persuaded to leave the tangle alone.

Point of View: The story is told from the point of view of the animals that inhabit the tangle.

Synthesis: The reader will synthesize that there are certain things that keep the balance of nature.

Personification: The point of view is from the tree.  The tree’s voice is heard through a rhyming text about a tree from its roots to its branches.

Author’s Purpose: The simple text provides the reader with the basic information about how a tree grows, what lives in it, and what lives below it.  The youngest reader will know more about trees after reading this book.

Reader’s Theater: The rhyming couplets read by young children dressed as tree inhabitants would be a wonderful production!

Text-to-Text Connections: City Mouse, Country Mouse

Life cycle of a frog

This book is a great one to show the seasons.  During the season of winter, frog does not come out to play.  He could be hibernating since frogs do hibernate.  I think the reader can read this book on many levels.  For the youngest child, the focus on the seasons, hibernation, and playing is enough.  For the older reader, a discussion about meeting new friends, coping with change, and enjoying life as it comes to us can happen.  Maybe the frog had died, but the reader is not told.  I choose to think he is just hibernating and will join dog and chipmunk later.

Author’s Purpose: make readers aware of the importance of wolves in the ecosystem. Create a chart of the temperate forest food chain.

Cause and Effect: This book is filled with great examples of cause and effect.  A graphic organizer such as the Cluster/Word Web Chart or the Multi-Flow from Thinking Maps works perfectly with this read aloud.  Park directors had encouraged anyone who saw a wolf to shoot it so that the animals left would all be peaceful ones. After 1926, there were no wolves in the U.S. The ecosystem in Yellowstone National Park was broken. In 1995 ten wolves were brought to Yellowstone from Canada.  After some time the ecosystem was restored.

Because the wolves were back the effect is mountain goats were forced to go back into the  mountains, the coyote population thinned leaving more squirrels for the badgers to eat,  bears thrived on the left overs the wolves provided, bison were driven away from the river areas allowing grass and the aspen trees to return, erosion around the river stopped as grasses returned, beavers returned creating  ponds which attracted dragonflies.  These are just a few of the cause/effect relationships mentioned in the book.  The paintings are also quite beautiful making for a great read aloud.

Compare and Contrast the before and after the wolves.

Synthesis: Have students reflect on what would happen if the wolves multiplied and nature became unbalanced with two many wolves.

Author’s purpose: to share real information about sea scientist, Jacques Cousteau.

Metaphor: Cousteau’s quote on the first page makes a mental image of the sea a casting spell over him and holding him with “its net of wonder.”   The sea is like a net in that it can capture you.

Cause and Effect: Because doctors told Jacques Cousteau to swim to build up his strength, the effect was that he started swimming and found that he loved the ocean.

Text-to-Self Connections:

Have you ever taken something apart to see how it works?  I had lots of response about this from my second graders such as helping parents repair things such as cars and motorcycles or taking electronic toys apart.

Car Accidents-many kids have been in one

Things that Change your life forever: Jacques had the goggles that changed his life.  Students shared things such as art, being baptized, having surgery, losing a loved one, having a new sibling, going to a certain school, pets dying, learning to play soccer, reading a book from a dog’s point of view, and technology.

Sometimes something changes our lives forever and we don’t realize it until later, but Jacques says he knew that very day when he used the goggles for the first time.

Characterization:  Use the Describing Wheel to list the traits of  Jacques Cousteau: inventor, scientist, explorer, humanitarian, writer, and film maker.

Drawing Conclusions: Jacques Cousteau was curious.  What text evidence supports this conclusion?  tinkering with gadgets, trying ways to make a snorkel tube, inventing the aqua lung, taking the camera apart, testing his hypothesis about living under the sea, inventing the saucer and sea flea

See the Jacques-Yves Cousteau website.

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.

Read the note at the back of the book so the students can understand the problem better before you begin the book.

Text-to-self connections: doing a project with a sibling, feeling sorry for the birds, seeing problems that wild birds cause

What city animals help keep the balance of nature in our area?  Some insects and birds eat mosquitoes, coyotes eat rats, and ladybugs eat aphids that harm our roses

Text-to-Text Connection: Trout Are Made of Trees by April Pulley Sayre

Organizational Strategies: the cycle of the story begins and ends with Ming-Li as a wise one about  farming.

Mental Images: “Scratching at her thoughts like a monkey.”

Cause and Effect: Because the sparrows were eating the grain from the fields, the effect is that the rulers want to scare the sparrows away.

Because Ming-Li felt so much empathy for the sparrows, the effect is that she rescued some of them.

Because the food chain is broken with the absence of the birds, the effect is that the locust, worms,  weevil, and grasshopper  population grew and devoured the crops even more than the sparrows did.

Voice: Ming-Li’s voice is the strongest one in the book.

POV:  The story is told from Ming-Li’s POV.

Author’s purpose: Historical fiction is a way to teach history in a way that readers can relate in a personal way to the events of the period in history.  The characters make the story more passionate.