Amanda's Text Set- Visualizing & Inferring

Saltzberg, B. The Soccer Mom From Outer Space

The night before a young girl plays her first soccer game of the season; her father tells her a story about his own first season playing soccer. His mother acted like all the other parents cheering on their children at the soccer game but she started to act differently and began to look like a pickle. His mother began to yell and roar whenever the team would score a goal, she was turning into an alien!

Strategy Connection: This book pertains to this strategy by having the students cover up the words on the pages and make their own predictions and meaning of the story from the pictures. Once the students created their own meaning, they would uncover the words and read the story to see how their interpretation compared with the actual story. This books has some great pictures that would really get the students thinking and really use their imagination. This is a great text to use for this strategy. Students would enjoy seeing how their own meaning relates to what the author wrote.

Saltzberg, B. Crazy Hair Day

Stanley Birdbaum is so excited for crazy hair day at his school. He has rolled and wrapped and dyed his hair. He has dipped it and sprayed it and made it pretty much perfect for this special day. He is ready to celebrate crazy hair day at school. But when Stanley enters the classroom, he comes to find that crazy hair day is . . . next week. What makes this situation even worse is that today is school picture day!

Strategy Connection: This book would be good to use during a sketch to stretch. Children usually always can think of a time when something bad has happened to them at school and they were embarrassed. This book would be good for the teacher to read to the students and then have them use their prior knowledge and sketch a time in their life when they felt the same way as Stanley. This book gives good detail before and during the event so there is a lot of description which would really get the students engaged in their own drawings and understandings. If the students did not have an even that related to this particular book, they could think of another book or maybe even a particular page or part in this book that they would like to sketch.

McNamara, M. How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?

Mr. Tiffin asks his class “How many seeds in a pumpkin?” as they all gather around the small, medium, and large pumpkins in the classroom. Robert, the biggest kid, guesses that the largest one has a million seeds; Elinor, sounding as if she knows all, suggests the medium one has 500 seeds; and Anna, who likes even numbers better than odd ones, guesses that the little one has 22. Charlie, the smallest boy in the class, doesn't have a guess. Counting pumpkin seeds is quite confusing as well as messy. But once the job is done they found that the smallest pumpkin had the most seeds!

Strategy Connection: This book would be great to have the students use their different senses when reading or listening to the story. Most students can probably recall a time when they carved pumpkins and began counting the seeds. When fall comes, there is a certain smell that comes too. Studnets should use their senses to recall smell, taste, sight, feeling and hearing when reading this book about pumpkin seeds. Students will better connect with the story by using this strategy and become more engaged in the learning.