1)Context Clue Finder

2)Connector

3)Character Analysis

4)Psychic

All students write summaries of the chapters as part of their job.

A good summary will include the setting, characters, and main events of the chapters. Summaries will usually be about a half-page long.

  1. Discussion Director
  2. Write four questions that examine the nature and purpose of the chapters
  3. At least three of these questions should be “Why” or “How” questions
  4. Good questions will have multiple answers

Examples of good questions:

-Why does Joey not want to play baseball after his best friend moves away?

-How does the setting affect the mood of the story?

-What should Samantha do when the bullies on the bus make fun of her sister?

Examples of bad questions:

-How many sisters does Maria have?

-What is Matt’s favorite sport?

  1. Word Wizard
  2. Make four word wizard cards
  3. Use unknown, difficult, or challenging words

Definition Page and paragraph number
Word
Part of Speech Picture
Synonym/ Antonym
  1. Connector

There are three connections—text to self, text to text, and text to world

Text-to-self—Compare something that happens in the story to something that happened to you.

ex. Marty finds a stray dog in Shiloh and I found a stray dog when I was seven.

Text-to-text—Compare something that happens in the story to something that happens in a different book or movie

ex. Shiloh gets badly injured in this book and Old Dan and Little Ann both get badly injured by a mountain lion in Where the Red Fern Grows

Text-to-World—Compare something that happens in the book to something that typically happens in the world

ex. Judd kills a deer out of season in Shiloh, but most people in the world follow hunting rules.

  1. Character Analysis

Pick out one character from the chapter (this should be a main character). Explain two actions and two feelings of the character using both details from the text and your own inferences.

ex. Action—Tommy runs away from the schoolbus.

Explanation—Tommy was probably scared to go to school. In chapter six, the author writes that Tommy “was frightened at the thought of the clanging noise of a fire drill”. Tommy probably just didn’t want to go through a fire drill, so he decided he wouldn’t go to school.

  1. Psychic

Your job is to make predictions about what will happen later in the book. Make three total predictions, two that will occur in the next section and one that will happen anytime later in the story. Your predictions must be based on evidence, details from the text.

FactInferencePrediction

Omri finds anIt probably isn’t very importantThe cupboard will become

old cupboardsince someone threw it outimportant and Omri won’t get

rid of it