Sarah, Plain and Tall Close Reading and Text-Dependent Questions


Book Description

Students analyze Sarah, Plain and Tall using key skills from the Common Core. Close reading of the text is required to answer text-dependent questions. Included are student pages with the text-dependent questions as well as suggested answers.




Sarah, Plain and Tall


Book Description

"Did Mama sing every day?" Caleb asks his sister Anna. "Every-single-day," she answers. "Papa sang, too." Their mother died the day after Caleb was born. Their house on the prairie is quiet now, and Papa doesn't sing anymore. Then Papa puts an ad in the paper, asking for a wife, and he receives a letter from one Sarah Elisabeth Wheaton, of Maine. Papa, Anna, and Caleb write back. Caleb asks if she sings. Sarah decides to come for a month. She writes Papa: I will come by train. I will wear a yellow bonnet. I am plain and tall, and Tell them I sing. Anna and Caleb wait and wonder. Will Sarah be nice? Will she like them? Will she stay?




Sarah, Plain and Tall: An Instructional Guide for Literature


Book Description

Young readers will enjoy this heartwarming story following Sarah's journey with a small family to become the mother-figure they desperately need. Sarah, Plain and Tall: An Instructional Guide for Literature provides rigorous and engaging lessons and activities to aid your students' explorations of rich, complex literature. Readers will learn such skills as analyzing and comprehending story elements in multiple ways, practicing close reading and text-based vocabulary, and determining meaning through text-dependent questions. Add rigor to your students' explorations of this Newbery Medal-winning novel.




Skylark


Book Description

The second book in the series that began with the Newbery Medal–winning Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan. My mother, Sarah, doesn't love the prairie. She tries, but she can't help remembering what she knew first. Sarah came to the prairie from Maine to marry Papa. But that summer, a drought turned the land dry and brown. Fires swept across the fields and coyotes came to the well in search of water. So Sarah took Anna and Caleb back east, where they would be safe. Papa stayed behind. He would not leave his land. Maine was beautiful, but Anna missed home, and Papa. And as the weeks went by, she began to wonder what would happen if the rains never came. Would she and Caleb and Sarah and Papa ever be a family again?




A Parent's Guide to Sarah, Plain and Tall


Book Description

Our Parent's Guide to Sarah, Plain and Tall is a comprehensive book guide that allows you work with your child on this text without actually having to read the book yourself. It is designed to allow you to talk about what your child has read and be confident in assessing their responses. It will allow you to get a sense of how well your child understand what they read and also how to support them in boosting their comprehension. Our book guides for parents include: -A explanation of each section of the book guide that provides suggestions about how best to use each section to boost your child's comprehension. -An explanation of the genre of the book. -Various background materials that will help to provide a better understanding of the context of the story. -A summary of the entire book so you have a good idea of the major events that take place in the story. -An in-depth look at the various themes that will be developed throughout the book and what types of questions to ask your child as you explore these themes together. -"Big Idea" Questions that are designed to give you a sense of the deeper understands your child should take away from reading this book. -An overview of the developmental concepts that apply to children of this age and what happens in the story. It is designed to inform you about where children typically are in developing their concept of the larger world and how best to work with them to further this development as they explore the events in the story and how it applies to their own understanding and world view. -A guide to the chapter sections so you know how best to use them as your child reads this text. Each chapter guide includes: -Important vocabulary your child show know before reading the chapter so that it doesn't get in the way of their comprehension -A detailed summary of the chapter so that you can be familiar with the events from the chapter without having to read it yourself -Text-Based Questions with example responses: These questions address the events of the story with basic recall questions. Each question comes with a sample answer so you have a good idea of what your child should say in response to these questions. -Critical Thinking Questions with example responses: These questions push your child to think about the events of the chapter in a more challenging way. Each question comes with a sample answer so you have a good idea of what your child should say in response to these questions. -Theme Based Questions with example responses: These questions are designed to help child connect the events of the chapter to the development of the themes throughout the story. Each question comes with a sample answer so you have a good idea of what your child should say in response to these questions. -Making Connections Questions: These questions challenge your child to make connections between the events of the story and things that may have happened to them in their own lives. Everyone's experiences are unique, so there are no sample answers here. Once you arrive at these questions, you'll have a good idea of what an appropriate response would be like.




A Close Look at Close Reading


Book Description

Find out how to teach young learners to be close readers and how to make close reading a habit of practice in the elementary classroom.




Close Reading Literature Activities for Grades 2-3 (Set B)


Book Description

Students analyze three children's books using key skills from the Common Core. Close reading of the text is required to answer text-dependent questions. Included are student pages with the text-dependent questions as well as suggested answers.




Reading Reconsidered


Book Description

TEACH YOUR STUDENTS TO READ WITH PRECISION AND INSIGHT The world we are preparing our students to succeed in is one bound together by words and phrases. Our students learn their literature, history, math, science, or art via a firm foundation of strong reading skills. When we teach students to read with precision, rigor, and insight, we are truly handing over the key to the kingdom. Of all the subjects we teach reading is first among equals. Grounded in advice from effective classrooms nationwide, enhanced with more than 40 video clips, Reading Reconsidered takes you into the trenches with actionable guidance from real-life educators and instructional champions. The authors address the anxiety-inducing world of Common Core State Standards, distilling from those standards four key ideas that help hone teaching practices both generally and in preparation for assessments. This 'Core of the Core' comprises the first half of the book and instructs educators on how to teach students to: read harder texts, 'closely read' texts rigorously and intentionally, read nonfiction more effectively, and write more effectively in direct response to texts. The second half of Reading Reconsidered reinforces these principles, coupling them with the 'fundamentals' of reading instruction—a host of techniques and subject specific tools to reconsider how teachers approach such essential topics as vocabulary, interactive reading, and student autonomy. Reading Reconsidered breaks an overly broad issue into clear, easy-to-implement approaches. Filled with practical tools, including: 44 video clips of exemplar teachers demonstrating the techniques and principles in their classrooms (note: for online access of this content, please visit my.teachlikeachampion.com) Recommended book lists Downloadable tips and templates on key topics like reading nonfiction, vocabulary instruction, and literary terms and definitions. Reading Reconsidered provides the framework necessary for teachers to ensure that students forge futures as lifelong readers.




Reading, Writing, and Rigor


Book Description

What does rigor, a word that frequently pops up in conversations about education, really mean? More specifically, what does it mean for literacy instruction, and how does it relate to challenging standards-based assessments? In this informative and practical guide, literacy expert Nancy Boyles uses the framework from Webb’s Depth of Knowledge (DOK) to answer these questions, offering experience-based advice along with specific examples of K–8 assessment items. Boyles defines rigor and shows how it relates to literacy at each DOK level and explains the kind of thinking students will be expected to demonstrate. She then tackles the essence of what teachers need to know about how DOK and its associated rigors are measured on standards-based assessments. Specifically, readers learn how each DOK rigor aligns with • standards, • text complexity, • close reading, • student interaction, • the reading-writing connection, and • formative assessment. Teachers, coaches, and administrators will find clear guidance, easy-to-implement strategies, dozens of useful teaching tools and resources, and encouragement to help students achieve and demonstrate true rigor in reading and writing.




Journey


Book Description

Journey is eleven the summer his mother leaves him and his sister, Cat, with their grandparents. He is sad and angry, and spends the summer looking for the clues that will explain why she left. Journey searches photographs for answers. He hunts family resemblances in Grandma's albums. Looking for happier times, he tries to put together the torn pieces of the pictures his mother shredded before her departure. And he also searches the photographs his grandfather takes as the older man attempts to provide Journey with a past. In the process, the boy learns to look and finds that, for him, the camera is a means of finding things his naked eye has missed--things like inevitability of his mother's departure and the love that still binds his family.