Lesson 1: A FIne, Fine School
Written by Sharon Creech and Illustrated by Harry Bliss
Genre Focus: Humorous Fiction
Target Strategy: Summarizing
Vocabulary Focus: Multiple-Meaning Words
• principal - the leader of a school
• soared - flew upward
• strolled - walked slowly
• worried - thinking about something bad that may happen
• proud - pleased with yourself or someone else
• announced - made known
• fine - very nice
• certainly - surely
Grammar Focus: Subjects & Predicates
Writing Style: Narrative - Descriptive Paragraph
What makes a great descriptive paragraph?
Genre Focus: Humorous Fiction
- Humorous fiction is a make-believe story that is written to entertain the reader.
- Story structure is the way a writer presents the characters, setting and plot-or events-in a story. Identifying the elements in a story and how they fit together helps a reader understand what happens and why it happens.
Target Strategy: Summarizing
- When we summarize, we briefly tell the important parts of a story. By answering the questions who, where, when, and what, we can identify the main parts of a story: character, setting, and plot; therefore, summarizing the story.
Vocabulary Focus: Multiple-Meaning Words
- Multiple-meaning words are words that have more than one meaning. Sometimes words have different meanings depending on how they are used in a sentence. Sometimes we can figure out the meaning of a multiple-meaning word by looking at the context. The context includes the words and sentences around a word that gives us clues about that word's meaning. We can also get information about a word's meaning by using a dictionary or glossary entry.
• principal - the leader of a school
• soared - flew upward
• strolled - walked slowly
• worried - thinking about something bad that may happen
• proud - pleased with yourself or someone else
• announced - made known
• fine - very nice
• certainly - surely
Grammar Focus: Subjects & Predicates
- A sentence is a group of words that tells a complete thought. Every sentence has two parts. The subject tells whom or what the sentence is about. The subject is usually found at the beginning of the sentence. It can be made up of one word or more than one word. The complete subject includes all the words in the subject. The predicate tells what the subject does or is. It can be made up of one word or more than one word. The complete predicate includes all the words in the predicate.
Writing Style: Narrative - Descriptive Paragraph
What makes a great descriptive paragraph?
- A topic sentence tells the main idea and lets the reader know what the writer is describing.
- Supporting sentences tell about the main idea.
- The use of exact words help to create a picture in the reader's mind.
- Sensory details tell how something looks, sounds, tastes, smells or feels.
- The closing sentence finishes the paragraph and tells what the writer thinks or feels.