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A Day With Grandpa      FIRST READING

From Justin and the Best Biscuits in the World

By Mildred Pitts Walter 

Before reading – Choose either RIVET or Guess The Covered Word to introduce vocabulary 

RIVET (Guided Reading the Four Blocks Way, pages 70-74)

biscuits

wrinkled

dough

prairie

rumpled

teasing 

Guess The Covered Word (see Month By Month Phonics for Upper Grades Book) 

A Day With Grandpa

Jake’s freshly ironed clothes were getting dusty and rumpled from riding around the prairie, working with Grandpa. But Jake didn’t mind that his clothes were so creased and wrinkled. He was having a great time, though he was working hard and getting hungry. When they stopped for lunch, Grandpa built a fire and made biscuits. At first, Jake was teasing Grandpa about putting raisins in the dough, but after tasting them, Jake decided they were the best biscuits ever. And this day with Grandpa was the best day ever too.  

Teach students about prediction.

Another thinking strategy you use while you read is predicting and anticipating. This, too, begins when you see the title and accompanying pictures. As you read, your mind thinks ahead about where the text is going and what it may tell you. Sometimes, you have a specific guess or prediction about what is going to happen. Sometimes, you don’t have a specific guess or prediction about what will happen, but you are anticipate the direction the text will take. Often your anticipating includes a voice in your brain starting sentences with, “I wonder….” Predicting/anticipating are strategies your brain uses to make sense of, enjoy, and learn from whatever you are reading. In addition, prediction/anticipation has a motivating effect. Once it occurs to you that something may happen, you read to see if it does indeed happen. When you wonder what will happen, you read to find out what does happen. Sometimes your ideas are confirmed, and sometimes you may be surprised by the text. Regardless of how accurate your predictions and anticipations are, they keep you reading and actively engaged in that reading (Guided Reading the Four Blocks Way, page 46). 

During reading – While you are reading today, I want you to pay attention to your predictions. Record them on a prediction log. Find support for your prediction. Also, adjust or further support the predictions.  

After reading – Discuss the predictions on the log and how they changed. Use text to justify answers.

 
A Day With Grandpa 

Jake’s freshly ironed clothes were getting  

dusty and rumpled from riding around the prairie,  

working with Grandpa. But Jake didn’t mind that  

his clothes were so creased and wrinkled. He was  

having a great time, though he was working hard  

and getting hungry. When they stopped for lunch,  

Grandpa built a fire and made biscuits. At first,  

Jake was teasing Grandpa about putting raisins in  

the dough, but after tasting them, Jake decided  

they were the best biscuits ever. And this day  

with Grandpa was the best day ever too.

 
A Day With Grandpa     SECOND READING

From Justin and the Best Biscuits in the World

By Mildred Pitts Walter 

Note to the teacher, Scott Foresman suggests teaching about setting. The Beach Ball lends itself to this instruction. See TE for more suggestions for discussing setting.  

Before reading – Guided Reading the Four Blocks Way page 99 “Doing the Beach Ball” can be used to set the purpose and help children organize information from a story or chapter book. Using this format helps children to develop the same important concepts, and can lead to the development of written story maps. Read the questions from the beach ball before reading so the students can be thinking about their answers: 

  • What is the title and who is the author?

  • Who are the characters?

  • What is the setting?

  • What happened in the story?

  • How did it end?

  • What was your favorite part?

 

During reading – While you are reading the story today, think about the answers to these questions. The students are engaged in their reading. They are noticing information from the story that they want to use to answer the questions. This is active, purposeful reading.  

After reading – The teacher and the children form a large circle. The teacher names a student, and throws the ball to her/him. The student catches the ball and can answer any of the questions written on the ball. He returns the ball to the teacher. The teacher controls the beach ball. The teacher throws it to a low reader. The low reader answers a question. This continues. Then the teacher throws the ball to a middle reader, the middle readers have to add on a question that may have already been answered with new information. The upper readers receive the ball last, so they will really have to stretch to think of new information to add on to the previously shared information. Continue throwing the ball until all the questions have been thoroughly answered.

 
A Day With Grandpa     THIRD READING

From Justin and the Best Biscuits in the World

By Mildred Pitts Walter 
 

Before reading – Guided Reading the Four Blocks Way, pages 44-45 states: As you read, your brain synthesizes information from the words to comprehend the sentences, information from the sentences to comprehend the paragraphs, information from paragraphs to synthesize sections, and so on, as you move through the text. The text tells you some things, you drew conclusions that pulled together information you had read and what you knew from your own life experiences. As you read, you constantly accumulate information, and you keep this information in mind by subsuming smaller facts into larger generalizations. You summarize, conclude, infer, and generalize, and then your read some more, incorporate the new information, and draw even bigger conclusions.  

Teach ways to write a summary. GIST and WHO WANTED BUT SO and USING SEQUENCE CLUE WORDS are three examples. 

GIST

The group will write a summary in 20 words.

Explanation: The GIST of something is the main idea. Sometimes we don’t need to remember all the details but read just to get the GIST of the material. 

Procedure:

Draw 20 word sized blanks on the chalkboard.

After reading a short section of text (one-two paragraphs), the students will assist the teacher in writing a 20 word summary to give the gist of what they read.

Now, read an additional section of text (one-two paragraphs). Information from both sections must be incorporated into a new 20 word summary.

It is possible to read a third section and condense the summary one more time. 

Take from pp 130-131, Developing Readers and Writers in the Content Areas k-12, Third Edition, (Moore, Moore, Cunningham, and Cunningham, 1998) 

WHO 
WANTED TO 
BUT 
SO 

Using Sequence Clue Words – First, Next, After that, Next, Then, Finally 
 

During reading -- Today we are going to write a summary of this story. Look back through the story to identify things Justin has learned from Grandpa.  

After reading – Write a summary of the story using one of the techniques of summary.