The Relatives Came

Rylant, Cynthia. The Relatives Came. (1993). Gammell, Stephen (Illus.).   Atheneum Books for Young Readers

Who does not love leaving at 4:00am to drive to spend weeks on end with your relatives. Through this text you will see how daily life changes when the relatives come to town. You will also see traditions that only happen when the relatives come to visit.

Connecting to the Standards

Grade 2 SL (4): Tell a story or recount an experience with appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details, speaking audibly in coherent sentences.

• Students will meet this standard when they are given the change to present to the class about their family tradition. 

 
Learning Outcomes  
Students will write about a tradition that they have with their family with 80% accuracy.

Adapted to the Classroom  
To start this less you can your students if they know what a relative is, and what traditions the students have when relatives come to visit. If the students do not know what a relative is, you will give them context clues to help them get to the point where they can figure it out on their own. After you have established what a relative is with the students you will read this text. While reading the text you will use reading strategies to make sure the students are still engaged into the story. After the story is over, talk with the class about family traditions that happened within the text. When this conversation has closed, you will give students the chance to write about one of their traditions. When they finish writing about their traditions, students will be given the chance to tell the class about their tradition they have with their family.

Bloom's Taxonomy
What is a relative? (Knowledge)
Identify three traditions your family has. (Application)


Differentiation 
For students with Dyslexia, they will be given the option to either type their response or they will be provided with a dictionary to help with spelling if they choose to hand write it
For students who finish their assignment early, they will be ask to draw a picture of what their tradition looks like.

Henry and Mudge: In the Green Time

Rylant, Cynthia. Henry and Mudge In The Green Time. (1987). Stevenson Sucie (Illus.).
     New York, New York: Bradbury Press

This adventure of Henry and Mudge takes place in the summer and all the things they can do on green grass. They have a picnic on the grass in the park where Henry gets stung by a bee but Mudge cheers him up. They play with the water hose out on the green lawn to give Mudge a bath that he does not like, so he gets Henry back soaking him when he shakes all the water off. Finally Henry and Mudge head up a hill where they let there magic imaginations unleash and eventually get worn out and fall asleep under the tree.

Connecting to the Standards
Grade 2 RL (1): Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding of key details in text

• This story allows student to answer a questions about what Henry and Mudge
   do when they are in the 3 different chapter. 

Grade 2 W (3): Write narratives in which they recount a well-elaborated event or short sequence of events, include details to describe actions, thoughts, and feelings, use temporal words to signal event order and provide a sense of closure

• This story allows students to meet this standard because they can write about the different events in each of the 3 different chapters.

Learning Outcomes
Students will answer the question, "Which Henry and Mudge story was your favorite and why, and who is your favorite character and why?" citing the text twice with 80% accuracy

Adapted to the Classroom 
After reading the text as a class we would discuss what happened in each story. While discussing we would write down a class summary of each text and events we think to be important. It is at this point that I would ask questions to help the children. Through this discussion I would make sure that each students have a good understanding as to what happened in each story. Once student's understanding have been checked, I would then dismiss students to answer the overall question. It is at this time that students would answer the question "Which Henry and Mudge story was your favorite and why?" and "Who is your favorite character and why?"

Once students have completed this text as a class we would then create a graph to see which story was the class favorite and which character was the class favorite.

Bloom's Taxonomy
Who are the main characters in our story? (Knowledge)
 If you were Mudge, how would you solve the problem of not wanted to take a bath? (Application)
Suppose you could have a magical place like Henry and Mudge, what would do when you are at your magical place? (Synthesis)

Differentiation 
For students who are not able to write, we would make sure that they have access to assistive technology that would allow them to type out their answer to the questions.
For students who are gifted we would take the questions one step further to make sure that they are stilling being challenged