Students Will Explain How the Beginning and Ending Are Connected

Lesson Seed

Unit Title: Communities
Grade Level: 2nd
Essential Question: What makes a community?
Focus Question: Who lives in the community?
Text/Resources:
Grandpa’s Teeth by Rod Clement
Alternate text: This story is displayed and read aloud with expert voicing, including Grandpa’s toothless lisp, on YouTube ( which can be projected onto a whiteboard.
Lexile: AD 530L

Summary: When Grandpa’s teeth are stolen from his bedside table and the police can’t find the thief, everyone is suspect – except Grandpa’s dog, Gump, who is too old to steal anything. Tired of smiling to prove their innocence, everyone in the community chips in to buy Grandpa new teeth. Everyone is happy, including Gump who smiles broadly displaying his teeth…for the first time ever.
Standards:
RL.2.3. Describe how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges.
RL.2.5. Describe the overall structure of a story, including describing how the beginning introduces the story and the ending concludes the action.
RL.2.7. Use information gained from the illustrations and words in a print or digital text to demonstrate understanding of its characters, setting, or plot.
RL.2.10. By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories and poetry, in the grades 2–3 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.

L.2.4. Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grade 2 reading and content, choosing flexibly from an array of strategies. (Use sentence-level context as a clue to the meaning of a word or phrase.)

W.2.1. Write opinion pieces in which they introduce the topic or book they are writing about, state an opinion, supply reasons that support the opinion, use linking words (e.g., because, and, also) to connect opinion and reasons, and provide a concluding statement or section.
Student Outcomes:

Students will attend to details in pictures and text to explain how characters respond to a problem.
Students will explain how the beginning and ending are connected.
Students will explore the word, grave, as it applies to the worsening situation in the story.
Students will cite evidence to support their opinion of the story’s solution.
Students will use picture and text details to explain how the story is both serious and silly.

Sample Activity:
Tell students that you are going to read a story in which a community is brought together because of one person’s problem. Have students listen and look closely to find out if the problem is solved. Engage in an interactive read aloud.Use any or all of these text-dependent questions to engage students in a cooperative discussion with a partner or with the students in their groups.

How does the story beginning show that the theft of Grandpa’s teeth is serious?
Why did Officer Rate look grave after searching the house?
What did community helpers do to help Grandpa?
How did the teeth theft become a grave situation for the community?
How and why did the community solve Grandpa’s problem?
Why is Gump mentioned in the beginning and ending of the story?
Is the thief identified by the end of the story? How do you know?
How is this story both serious (grave) and silly? (Reread the story closely to discuss this question.)

Routine writing: Students will use evidence from the story to support their opinion about whether or not the teeth theft was solved.
**Prepare for small group/guided reading instruction by selecting appropriate text and materials. Make connections to the concept of Teamwork wherever possible.