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Heinemann

361 Hanover Street

Portsmouth, NH 03801–3912

www.heinemann.com

Offices and agents throughout the world

electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,

without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote

brief passages in a review, with the exception of reproducible pages, which are

identified by the Texts and Lessons for Teaching Literature credit line and may be

photocopied for classroom use only.

“Dedicated to Teachers” is a trademark of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.

The authors and publisher wish to thank those who have generously given permission

to reprint borrowed material:

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Daniels, Harvey.

Texts and lessons for teaching literature : with 65 fresh mentor texts from Dave

Eggers, Nikki Giovanni, Pat Conroy, Jesus Colon, Tim O’Brien, Judith Ortiz Cofer, and

many more / Harvey “Smokey” Daniels and Nancy Steineke.

pages cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN-13: 978-0-325-04435-4

ISBN-10: 0-325-04435-X

1. Literature—Study and teaching (Middle school). 2. Literature—Study and

teaching (Secondary). 3. Content area reading. I. Steineke, Nancy, author.

II. Title.

LB1575.D36 2013

807.12

—dc23 2012046368

Editor: Tobey Antao

Production management: Sarah Weaver

Production coordination: Patty Adams

Cover and interior design: Lisa Anne Fowler

Typesetter: Gina Poirier Design

Manufacturing: Steve Bernier

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

17 16 15 14 13 ML 1 2 3 4 5

permission of the Author.

Published by Scholastic. Reprinted by permission of Flannery Literary Agency.

continues on page vii

TL_Fiction_Chapter FM_Layout 1 2/6/13 11:56 AM Page ii

CHAPTER 1

Welcome 1

CHAPTER 2

How to Use This Book 6

CHAPTER 3

Sharing Literature Aloud 18

3.1

Pair Share

“Choices Made” by Jim O’Loughlin

3.2

Teacher Read-Aloud

“Tuning,” Preface from The Winter Room by Gary Paulsen

3.3

One-Minute Write

“The Limited” by Sherman Alexie

3.4

Teacher Think-Aloud

“Untitled” by Dan Argent

3.5

Partner Think-Aloud

“There’s No Place Like It” by Dean Christianson

“Death in the Afternoon” by Priscilla Mintling

CHAPTER 4

Smart-Reader Strategies 37

4.1

Text Annotation

“Afterthoughts” by Sara Holbrook

“The Boy They Didn’t Take Pictures Of” by Dave Eggers

4.2

Connections and Disconnections

“Ambush” by Roger Woodward

4.3

Drawing Text Details

“Ascent” by Michael Salinger

4.4

Reading with Questions in Mind

“Noel” by Roger Plemmons

4.5

Inferring Meaning

Assorted Six-Word Memoirs

4.6

Tweet the Text

“The Sweet Perfume of Good-Bye” by M. E. Kerr

III

Contents

CONTENTS

TL_Fiction_Chapter FM_Layout 1 2/6/13 11:56 AM Page iii

CHAPTER 5

Lively Discussions 65

5.1

Written Conversation

“Rose” by John Biguenet

5.2

Thirty-Second Look

Mining Village by Stevan Dohanos

5.3

Follow-Up Questions

“Deportation at Breakfast” by Larry Fondation

5.4

Save the Last Word for Me

“Stingray” by Michael Salinger

5.5

Literature Circles

“The Chimpanzees of Wyoming” by Don Zancanella

CHAPTER 6

Closer Readings 103

6.1

Denotation/Connotation

103

“Chameleon Schlemieleon” by Patric S. Tray

107

6.2

Setting the Scene

108

Wanderer in the Storm by Carl Julius von Leypold

111

6.3

Two-Column Notes

112

“Forwarding Order Expired” by John M. Daniel

116

6.4

Point-of-View Note Taking

117

“Accident” by Dave Eggers

120

6.5

Seeing a Character

121

Untitled by James Henry Moser

124

6.6

Metaphorically Speaking

126

“Fight #3” by Helen Phillips

129

“How the Water Feels to the Fishes” by Dave Eggers

130

6.7

Rereading Prose

131

“The Father” by Raymond Carver

136

6.8

Rereading Poetry

137

“Ducks” by Michael Salinger

140

CHAPTER 7

Up and Thinking 141

7.1

Find an Expert

141

“The Horror” by Dave Eggers

148

7.2

Text on Text

149

“I Am From” by Lorian Dahkai

152

7.3

Frozen Scenes

153

“This Is How I Remember It”

by Betsy Kemper (mature)

157

Contents

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7.4

The Human Continuum

158

“Little Things Are Big” by Jesus Colon

161

7.5

Character Interview Cards

163

“The Container” by Deb Olan Unferth

167

CHAPTER 8

Literary Arguments 169

8.1

Take a Position

169

“We? #5” by Helen Phillips

172

8.2

Finish the Story

173

“Little Brother

” by Bruce Holland Rogers

177

8.3

Arguing Both Sides

180

“The Wallet” by Andrew McCuaig

185

CHAPTER 9

Coping with Complex and Classic Texts 187

9.1

Literary Networking

187

“The Storyteller” by Saki

192

9.2

Characters Texting

196

“Persephone and Demeter” by Thomas Bulfinch

199

9.3

Opening Up a Poem

203

“The Listeners” by Walter de la Mare

206

9.4

Stop, Think, and React

207

“The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe

211

9.5

Reading with Expression

217

“Witches’ Chant” from Macbeth by William Shakespeare

220

CHAPTER 10

Text Set Lessons 223

Memory

224

“Kennedy in the Barrio” by Judith Ortiz Cofer

226

Excerpt from the Warren Commission Report (1964)

227

Announcement of President Kennedy’s Death

by Walter Cronkite (available online)

Citizenship

229

“Canvassing for the School Levy” by Sara Holbrook

231

Life Stories

232

“Nikki-Rosa” by Nikki Giovanni

235

“Nikki Giovanni Biography” from Wikipedia

236

“Giovanni Timeline” by Nikki Giovanni (available online)

Contents

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Mothers and Daughters

237

“Persephone and Demeter”

by Thomas Bulfinch

199

(Lesson 9.2)

“Mother #1” by Helen Phillips

241

“Mother Disapproved of Him” (mature)

by Rita Mae Brown

242

Narcissism

244

Narcissus by Caravaggio (available online)

“Narcissus and Echo” (adapation) by Ovid

246

“Narcissism” from Wikipedia

248

“The Stag and His Reflection” by Aesop

249

Labels

250

“Labels” by Sara Holbrook

252

“Sitting Bull Returns” at the Drive-In

by Willard Midgette

253

“Sure You Can Ask Me a Personal Question”

by Diane Burns

254

“On Making Him a Good Man by Calling Him

a Good Man” by Dave Eggers

256

“Speech at the U.S. Capitol” by Mandeep Chahal

257

Abuse

260

“Dozens of Roses: A Story for Voices”

by Virginia Euwer Wolff

263

“The Wallet” by Andrew McCuaig

185

(Lesson 8.3)

“My Father” (mature) by Pat Conroy

265

Soldiers and Heroes

267

“Broadcaster Refuses to Label Dead

Soldiers ‘Heroes’” by Lee Terrell

271

The Advance Guard, or The Military Sacrifice

(The Ambush) by Frederic Remington

272

“Three Soldiers” by Bruce Holland Rogers

273

“The News from Iraq” by Sara Holbrook

274

“Heroes” by Tim O’Brien

277

CHAPTER 11

Keeping Kids at the Center

of Whole-Class Novels

279

CHAPTER 12

Extending the Texts and Lessons 294

Appendix How the Lessons Correlate

with the Common Core Standards 300

Works Cited 302

Contents

TL_Fiction_Chapter FM_Layout 1 2/6/13 11:56 AM Page vi

Sherman Alexie. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic,

Inc., and Nancy Stauffer Associates.

“Untitled” by Dan Argent from New Scientist Magazine,

by Tribune Media Services.

“There’s No Place Like It” by Dean Christianson, “Death in

the Afternoon” by Priscilla Mintling, and “Chameleon

Schlemieleon” by Patric Tray from World’s Shortest Stories,

permission of Running Press Book Publishers, a member of

the Perseus Books Group via Copyright Clearance Center.

“Accident,” “The Boy They Didn’t Take Pictures Of,” “How

the Water Feels to the Fishes,” “The Horror,” and “On

Making Him a Good Man by Calling Him a Good Man”

from How the Water Feels to the Fishes: 145 Stories in a

Eggers. Published by McSweeney’s, San Francisco.

Reprinted by permission of the Author.

Poems: “Afterthoughts,” “Canvassing for the School Levy,”

“Labels,” and “The News from Iraq” by Sara Holbrook.

Reprinted by permission of the Author.

Poems: “Ducks,” “Ascent,” and “Stingray” by Michael

Salinger. Reprinted by permission of the Author.

Michael Plemmons. First appeared in the North American

Review. Reprinted by permission of the Author.

“The Sweet Perfume of Good-bye” by M. E. Kerr from

Visions: Nineteen Short Stories by Outstanding Writers for

1987 by Bantam Doubleday Dell. Reprinted by permission

of the Author.

“Rose” from The Torturer’s Apprentice by John Biguenet.

sion of HarperCollins Publishers.

“Deportation at Breakfast” by Larry Fondation as appeared

in Flash Fiction: 72 Very Short Stories, edited by James

1992 by W. W. Norton. Reprinted by permission of the

Author.

“Chimpanzees of Wyoming” from Western Electric by Don

lished by University of Iowa Press. Reprinted by permis-

sion of the Publisher.

“Forwarding Order Expired” by John M. Daniel. Reprinted

by permission of the Author.

“Fight #3,” “We? #5,” and “Mother #1” from And Yet They

Were Happy by Helen Phillips. Leapfrog Press, Leaplit,

2011. Reprinted by permission of the Publisher.

“The Father” from Will You Be Quiet, Please? by Raymond

by permission of International Creative Management, Inc.

“This Is How I Remember It” by Elizabeth Kemper French.

Reprinted by permission of the Author.

“Little Things Are Big” by Jesus Colon from Choosing to

Ourselves National Foundation. Reprinted by permission

of International Publishers Company, Inc., New York, and

Facing History and Ourselves National Foundation.

“The Container” from Minor Robberies: 145 Stories in a

Olin Unferth. Published by McSweeney’s, San Francisco.

Reprinted by permission of the Author.

“Little Brother

™” by Bruce Holland Rogers as appeared

in Strange Horizons. www.strangehorizons.com,

October 2000. Reprinted by permission of the Author.

www.shortshortshort.com.

“Three Soldiers” by Bruce Holland Rogers as appeared in

Flash Fiction Forward: 80 Very Short Stories, edited by

W. W. Norton. Reprinted by permission of the Author.

www.shortshortshort.com.

“The Wallet” by Andrew McCuaig. Originally appeared in

Beloit Fiction Journal (2001), Vol. 17, p. 130. Reprinted by

permission of the Author.

“Kennedy in the Barrio” by Judith Ortiz Cofer is reprinted

with permission from the publisher of “Year of Our Revo-

University of Houston).

VII

Credits continued from page ii:

TL_Fiction_Chapter FM_Layout 1 2/6/13 11:56 AM Page vii

“Nikki-Rosa” from Black Feeling, Black Talk, Black Judge-

vanni. Reprinted by permission of the Author.

“Mother Disapproved of Him” by Rita Mae Brown from

3 Minutes or Less: Life Lessons from America’s Greatest

Reprinted by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

“Sure, You Can Ask Me a Personal Question” by Diane

Burns from Aloud! Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café.

Published by Henry Holt and Company, LLC. Reprinted

by permission of the Copyright Holder.

“Dozens of Roses: A Story for Voices” by Virginia Euwer

appeared in From One Experience to Another published

by Tom Doherty Associates. Reprinted by permission of

Curtis Brown, Ltd.

appeared in 3 Minutes or Less: Life Lessons from America’s

Greatest Writers, edited by PEN/Faulkner Foundation.

Reprinted by permission of Marly Rusoff Literary Agency

for the Author.

“Heroes” by Tim O’Brien from 3 Minutes or Less: Life Les-

PEN/Faulkner Foundation. Reprinted by permission of

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

PHOTO CREDITS

Frederic Remington (1861 –1909), American, The Advance-

Guard, or The Military Sacrifice (The Ambush), 1890. Oil

on canvas, 87.3 × 123.1 cm (34

⅜ × 48 ½ in.). George F.

Harding Collection, 1982.802, The Art Institute of Chicago.

Julius von Leypold (1806–1874), Wanderer in the Storm.

Germany, 1835. Oil on canvas, 16¾ × 22 ¼ in. (42.5 × 56.5

cm). Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund,

2008 (2008.7). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New

York, NY, USA.

Willard Midgette (1937–1978), “Sitting Bull Returns” at the

Drive-In, 1976. Oil on canvas, 108 ¼ × 134

⅛ in. Gift of

Donald B. Anderson. Smithsonian American Art Museum,

Washington, DC, USA.

Stevan Dohanos (1907–1994), Mining Village (Study for

mural, Huntington, West Virginia, forestry service build-

ing), 1937. Tempera on fiberboard. Sheet: 15

⅞ ×17 in.

(40.3 × 43.2 cm); Image: 12

⅜ × 14 in. (31.3 × 35.7 cm).

Transfer from the General Services Administration

(1974.28.308). Smithsonian American Art Museum, Wash-

ington, DC, USA.

James Henry Moser (1854–1913), Untitled (Two Children

Playing Checkers), n.d. Pastel on paper, frame: 21 × 17 in.

(53.3 × 43.2 cm). Bequest of Carolyn A. Clampitt in mem-

ory of the J. Wesley Clampitt, Jr. Family (2010.10). Smith-

sonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, USA.

VIII

Credits, continued

TL_Fiction_Chapter FM_Layout 1 2/6/13 11:56 AM Page viii

WELCOME

GREETINGS, COLLEAGUES.

We are Smokey Daniels and Nancy Steineke, join-

ing you again with a new resource that we hope you’ll find useful.

Over the past several years, we have worked with students and teachers in

twenty-two states, conducting reading workshops and giving demonstration

lessons in middle and high school classrooms. Nancy’s day job is at Victor J.

Andrew High School in suburban Chicago, where she has taught language arts

(and once upon a time, home economics, but that’s another story) for thirty-

five years. Since Smokey no longer has a classroom of his own, he now logs fre-

quent-flier miles as a cross-country guest teacher, including stints at schools in

Chicago, Appalachia, Arkansas, New York, Texas, New Mexico, Wisconsin, and

Hawaii (someone has to do it), along with writing books and leading workshops.

In 2011 we published Texts and Lessons for Content-Area Reading, which

included collaborative comprehension lessons and kid-friendly nonfiction arti-

cles from a crazy array of sources (Rolling Stone, the Discovery Channel, the New

York Times, etc). Since that book came out, English language arts teachers have

been requesting a companion volume that uses literature instead of informational

text to teach deep comprehension and collaborative discussion. They wanted a

book that’s just for us ELA folks, not those greedy history and science teachers

served by the previous book. Our first love is literature, too. Who are we to refuse?

So here’s the product of our two-year search for the best, freshest, and

most engaging short literature for young people—and a collection of new, step-

by-step lessons that guide kids into, through, and beyond these texts. As with

the nonfiction edition, these lessons use engaging short selections to teach

close reading and deep comprehension through collaborative conversation

and lively debate. And every lesson in the book is correlated with the Common

Core Anchor Standards for Reading—as well as many standards for Speaking

and Listening, Language, and Writing.

Meeting and Exceeding the Common Core

State Standards

The experiences provided by our upcoming thirty-seven lessons closely parallel

the readings and tasks recommended by the Common Core State Standards

(CCSS) as well as the performances required in tests from the Partnership for

Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and Smarter Balanced

Assessment Consortium (SBAC). The main difference is that our lessons put stu-

dent curiosity and engagement first. The experiences are highly active and stu-

dent centered, unlike so many of the CCSS prep materials being developed

around the country.

CHAPTER 1 / Welcome

TL_Fiction_Chapter1-3_Layout 1 2/6/13 12:00 PM Page 1

CHAPTER 1 / Welcome

In recent years, the Common Core Standards have had a dramatic and some-

times unsettling impact on schools and teachers. We have plenty to say about the

challenges of the Core, but luckily for you, we are not going to do it here. This

book is about addressing the standards, not critiquing them. Smokey and our col-

leagues Steve Zemelman and Arthur Hyde recently released the fourth edition of

Best Practice: Bringing Standards to Life in America’s Classrooms (Heinemann

2012). That book offers an extended and balanced treatment of the CCSS—and

the many other standards documents and research studies that, together, pro-

vide a full vision of what excellent teaching and learning look like today.

For now, we’ll just show how this resource can help you engage your kids

and meet the CCSS for the English Language Arts, and in particular the Reading

Standards for Literature 6–12. To begin with, here are the anchors:

College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Reading

KEY IDEAS AND DETAILS

1. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make

logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writ-

ing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.

2. Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their

development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.

3. Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and

interact over the course of a text.

CRAFT AND STRUCTURE

4. Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including

determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and

analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.

5. Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences,

paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter,

scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole.

6. Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style

of a text.

INTEGRATION OF KNOWLEDGE AND IDEAS

7. Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse formats and

media, including visually and quantitatively as well as in words.

8. Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text,

including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and

sufficiency of the evidence.

9. Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics

in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the

authors take.

TL_Fiction_Chapter1-3_Layout 1 2/6/13 12:00 PM Page 2

CHAPTER 1 / Welcome

RANGE OF READING AND LEVEL OF TEXT COMPLEXITY

10. Read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts

independently and proficiently.

(www.corestandards.org/assets/CCSSI_ELA%20Standards.pdf)

When you think about this list, you realize that any good reading lesson

should incorporate all of these goals. Why would we ever design a lesson in

which kids didn’t take all text details into account, pay attention to the author’s

craft, build knowledge, and gain proficiency with challenging materials? Stu-

dents deserve it all. So every lesson in this book helps students gain practice

with most or all of the reading anchor standards.

While our main aim in this book is to enhance the reading of literature, we

also address other Common Core Standards in Speaking and Listening, Lan-

guage, and Writing, and these correlations are prominently noted. For example,

every lesson includes both small-group and whole-class discussion, as explicitly

called for in the Speaking and Listening Standards. And, since all sixty-five of

the reading selections reproduced here model excellence in language use, the

lessons also help students meet key Language Standards. And finally, most les-

sons require some kind of student writing or note taking. While the written

assignments are mostly brief and informal, each one helps to build the fluency,

skills, and process knowledge students need to meet the Writing Standards.

Prominent sidebars will help you see which Common Core Standards and

skills are receiving special focus and attention all the way through the book.

Then, in the appendix, we offer a chart that helps you correlate the lessons with

all relevant standards.

About the Readings: What’s Fresh in the Market?

Sometimes it seems as though the same fifty short stories and the same fifteen

poems are anthologized over and over. Partly, that’s because the major textbook

companies want to offer students time-tested readings from celebrated authors.

But there are plenty of other works of great literature out there, if you know

where to look for something fresh.

So where do we look? Both of us are inveterate and passionate collectors of

short-short fiction and short poems, in both their tree-based and digital forms.

If you looked at our voluminous email correspondence, or eavesdropped on our

weekly Saturday morning phone calls, you’d mainly hear us trading and reading

aloud great short pieces.

We are also inveterate and passionate teachers of reading comprehension,

thinking, and discussion strategies. That means we need a constant supply of

short texts to use in quick, lively, in-class lessons. When we introduce our stu-

dents to almost any literary idea or device, it’s only natural to pull out a short lit-

erature piece from our collections. We came to call these texts “one-page

wonders” (OPW in shorthand) because we shopped for kid-friendly reading

selections that could be photocopied on one or two pages.

TL_Fiction_Chapter1-3_Layout 1 2/6/13 12:00 PM Page 3

The reading selections we’ve collected here cover the genres of short stories,

poems, drama, and novels, with some essays and accompanying nonfiction

pieces appearing in the text sets (see Chapter 10). When choosing OPWs, we

favor selections that:

• are engaging, complex, and mostly contemporary

• feature newer, up-and-coming writers (or, if written by famous authors,

are not widely anthologized)

• are fresh to us teachers, too, so we can have the joy of discovery right

along with our kids

• have sufficient sensory detail and rich language to conjure up vivid

images of places and characters

• have enough depth and craft to reward second, closer readings

• address themes that can stimulate lively discussion and debate

among students

• are short enough to be read during class, so that a whole lesson can

be completed in one period or less

• allow photocopying, so kids can annotate their own copies

• help students practice key comprehension and thinking strategies

• can be extended into more days, or tied into broader literature units

We want to be especially clear about text complexity, a key focus of the Com-

mon Core Standards. A few of our chosen readings are intentionally easy to enter,

enjoy, and talk about. And why not? As the standards say, “Students need opportu-

nities to stretch their reading abilities but also to experience the satisfaction and

pleasure of easy, fluent reading, both of which the Standards allow for” (2010, p. 39).

But our main job, year in and year out, is to lead our students up a ladder of

challenge, building their stamina and pushing them along to literature that

requires more intentional thinking. But along that ladder, it’s also our duty to

provide just the right amount and type of support to keep kids progressing.

Every class period is not a high-stakes test; it is one more step upward

toward college and career readiness. So, even as we respect the CCSS focus on

complex text, we also think carefully about what makes that text accessible to

young readers along that upward path of their growth. Here are the considera-

tions we keep in mind:

FACTORS THAT MAKE COMPLEX TEXT MORE ACCESSIBLE

• The text is shorter rather than longer.

• The reader has chosen the text, versus it being assigned.

• The reader has relevant background knowledge.

• The topic has personal interest or importance.

• The text evokes curiosity, surprise, or puzzlement.

• The text has high coherence, meaning that it explains itself (e.g., “John

Langdon, a farmer and signer of the Constitution . . .”).

CHAPTER 1 / Welcome

TL_Fiction_Chapter1-3_Layout 1 2/6/13 12:00 PM Page 4

• The teacher evokes and builds the reader’s background knowledge.

• The teacher teaches specific strategies for monitoring comprehension,

visualizing, inferring, connecting to background knowledge, question-

ing, determining importance, and synthesizing.

• Readers can mark, write, or draw on text as they read.

• Readers are encouraged to talk about the text during and after reading.

• Readers can hear text read aloud by the teacher, by a classmate, or in a

small group.

• Readers have experience writing in the same genre.

Still, make no mistake about it: 90 percent of the pieces in this collection

are plenty complex. That’s because they are full-strength adult literature, which

we think middle and high school students should be engaging with regularly.

So we didn’t worry so much about Lexiles; instead, we picked selections that

grown-up, lifelong readers have paid to read. Trust us, there are plenty of pieces

here that give us English majors a run for our interpretive money, but are still

intriguing enough to keep teen readers digging and thinking.

Which brings us back to the question in our subhead, What’s fresh in the

market? You hear that expression a lot on those TV cooking shows when the

cameras follow a Famous Chef through the farmer’s market, right? She is looking

for the dewiest veggies, the most exotic meats, the strangest grains (freekeh, seri-

ously? kamut berries, really?), the revelatory ethnic treats. Great cooks seek the

latest, the newest, the weirdest. They want challenge. They want to create a dish

they’ve never cooked before. They want to work on the edge, take some risks,

and dazzle their diners.

If we literature teachers are chefs too, then we really need some fresh pro-

duce. To begin with, you just get tired of teaching To Kill a Mockingbird for the

twenty-third time (unless you’re Nancy). More importantly, when we teach a

novel or story to our students, they too often see us “read” texts we have read

many times before, thought about, talked about, maybe even written about. We

know it cold from all our previous encounters.

But this is not the same job we ask kids to do when they come in the class-

room each day. We place unfamiliar text in front of them and ask them to read it

“cold.” They almost never see us encountering unknown text, working to build

meaning the first time through. Well, if reading unfamiliar text is the students’

actual task, then we teachers better be demonstrating that job, early and often.

That means we need new texts to refresh and challenge ourselves.

Now, these sixty-five little jewels won’t be our favorite literary clips forever;

we’re always finding and adding new ones to the repertoire—and you should,

too. As you work with these pieces, you’ll start to internalize what makes a one-

page wonder, and start collecting your own. Hope you get as geeky about find-

ing them as we are.

So, shall we move on to the nuts and bolts of the lessons?

CHAPTER 1 / Welcome

TL_Fiction_Chapter1-3_Layout 1 2/6/13 12:00 PM Page 5

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

CHAPTER 2 / How to Use This Book

Coming right up, Chapters 3 through 9 present thirty-seven strategy lessons for

improving students’ literary comprehension and discussion, using very short

texts. In Chapter 10, we offer eight text set lessons, thematically connected

assortments of pieces designed to be studied, compared, and debated together.

Then, in Chapter 11, we bring forward three commonly taught whole-class nov-

els and show how you can use selected lessons from this book to teach those

works—and countless others—in a highly interactive, engaging way. And finally,

in Chapter 12, we explain how to grow your own inventory of special texts for

teaching literary thinking. Here’s the rundown.

Chapters 3–9: Strategy Lessons

The strategy lessons are each accompanied by at least one “one-page wonder”—

an enticing poem, short-short story, essay, or image that engages students in

close reading, thinking, and discussion. We selected these pieces with literary

quality and student engagement foremost in our minds. They cover a wide

range of genres and themes; only a few are abridged. The lessons accompanying

these readings offer specific suggestions and language you can use to teach

them. They are written as generally as possible, so you can use (and reuse) the

steps and language with any compatible text you choose. And the strategy les-

sons are quick: they are designed to be completed within ten to fifty minutes.

We have grouped the lessons into seven families based on their thinking

focus as well as their standards connections.

Sharing Literature Aloud

Smart-Reader Strategies

Lively Discussions

Closer Readings

Up and Thinking

Literary Arguments

Coping with Complex and Classic Texts

The strategy lessons appear in what we’d call a “mild sequential order.” For

example, kids can’t do arguing both sides unless they first know how to pair

share with a classmate. Very generally, the lessons become more complex and

socially demanding as they unfold. But, that being said, use them in whatever

order you like; so far, no fatalities have been reported due to reordering. You

can also mix and match—any lesson with any reading selection, ours or yours.

If a piece looks too easy or hard for your kids, don’t give up on the lesson—find

an alternative text elsewhere in the book or in your own collection, and carry

TL_Fiction_Chapter1-3_Layout 1 2/6/13 12:00 PM Page 6

on. And remember, always study any potential lesson text carefully to be sure it

is appropriate for your students and the community where you would like to

continue teaching.

Chapter 10: Text Set Lessons

The text sets follow a similar lesson format, but each one offers multiple coor-

dinated reading selections. Now students can range though two to five texts rep-

resenting different genres and authors, each of them taking a different angle on

a common topic or literary theme. This formula includes nonfiction selections

and various media in the mix, much as PARCC and Smarter Balanced assess-

ments do. Among our themes:

Memory

Citizenship

Life Stories

Mothers and Daughters

Narcissism

Labels

Abuse

Soldiers and Heroes

Text set lessons about these rich topics offer multiple points of entry for

different students, and provide for a deep and sustained engagement in reading

and thinking. They can easily lead to multiday units in which students do their

own research to shed further light on the theme.

The suggested sequence of activities for a text set is built from strategy les-

sons in the first part of the book. Therefore, the instructions for text sets are

more compact, since the necessary lesson steps are given in earlier chapters.

Don’t worry, we’ll clearly signal where you should look for each lesson step.

Chapter 11: Keeping Kids at the Center

of Whole-Class Novels

Whole-class novels are still a big part of the English language arts curriculum

in most middle and high schools (thank goodness). But now teachers are won-

dering: How can I teach these great books in a way that’s harmonious with the

Common Core Standards? How do I ensure my students are grasping all impor-

tant details, noticing the author’s craft and structure, improving their academic

vocabularies, and always stepping up their thinking skills? All while still being

deeply engaged with the story and with each other?

We looked up the most commonly taught novels in middle and high school,

and three of the top titles were:

The Giver, by Lois Lowry

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

CHAPTER 2 / How to Use This Book

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CHAPTER 2 / How to Use This Book

Literature Selection:

Each lesson is accompanied by a

short piece of fiction or poetry,

a historic image, or an excerpt

from a longer work. For most

lessons, you may copy and

distribute the pieces to students.

(For four selections, the authors

were unable to grant classroom

copying rights, and we indicate this

on the footers for those texts.) Kids

must be able to write and mark

directly on the page, so

make copies

for everyone

—not just one set that

gets passed from class to class. Also

keep in mind that you can substitute

your own selection and adapt our

language to teach—or revisit—

these skills.

Title: Names the teaching strategy.

Introduction: This brief introductory

note gives background on the strategy,

structure, or text being used, and

explains its value for students.

Steps & Teaching Language: This is

the core of the lesson, where all the

activities and teacher instructions are

spelled out in sequence and in detail.

Text that appears in regular typeface

indicates our suggestions for the

teacher. Text in

italic

is suggested

teaching language that you can try on

and use. If you substitute your own

selection, check to see where the

language might need to be adapted.

Time: Tells the expected length of the

lesson. Most strategy lessons range

from 10 to 50 minutes, averaging 30.

Each text set lesson fills at least one 50-

minute class period—and we give you

steps and language to dig deeper over

several additional periods.

Grouping Sequence: Tells how lesson

shifts among pairs, small-group, and

whole-class configurations.

Used in Text Sets: Lists the text sets in

Chapter 10 that use the lessons.

May be photocopied for classroom use. Texts and Lessons for Teaching Literature by Harvey “Smokey’ Daniels and Nancy Steineke,

Choices Made

Jim O’Loughlin

Part 1

Later, he would be able to consider all that he had left behind and never saw

again: the wedding album, the birth certificates, the kids’ favorite toys, even

the laptop. In the moment though, with the storm surging and blow back peel-

ing off the roof like masking tape, he only had time to grab what he could on

the way out.

Part 2

Still, even as he ran to the car, dripping sweat and bleeding from the gash in his

forehead, with the river already up to the wheel wells, he realized that the

choices he had just made said something about who he was. In his arms, he

held a phone book, the cantaloupe that had just turned ripe, and a gallon of

milk. And he had made sure to lock the front door.

SHARING LITERATURE ALOUD

Wise classroom practices—and the Common Core Standards—recognize the

importance of both teachers and students reading short literature selections aloud, and

paying close attention to the language, the ideas, and their own thinking as they do so.

HAPTER

3 / Sharing Literature Aloud

Steps &

Teaching

Language

TEXT

“Choices Made,”

by Jim O’Loughlin

TIME

10 Minutes

GROUPING SEQUENCE

Pairs,

whole class

USED IN TEXT SETS

3, 8

LESSON 3.1

Pair Share

This fifty-five-word story embodies a classic conversation starter: if you had to

suddenly flee your home, what three things would you take?

Well, it does happen. Every August, hurricane season begins in earnest.

People who live near the Atlantic coast must face the weather predictions with a

combination of dread, fear, and distrust. As we all know, for every prediction

that is dead-on, it seems like the previous ninety-nine—or more—have fizzled.

In the Midwest, we don’t have hurricanes; we have tornadoes, mostly tornado

watches and warnings that seldom become tornadoes. But when those storms

do make a direct hit, it’s often with little or no advance notice—especially if it’s

the middle of the night and people are sleeping. In the rest of the country,

depending on where you live and the season, you might be worrying about

floods, mudslides, brush/forest fires, or earthquakes. So, unlike the unwary

character in this story, be prepared!

PREPARATION

Copy the two-paragraph story and cut it in half. Good news: if you have a class

of thirty, you’ll only need to make fifteen copies! Be sure to put all the begin-

nings in one pile and the endings in another.

STEP 1

Organize pairs. Whenever kids will be working in pairs, they need to

know who their partner is beforehand, and they need to move into a

good conversation position—face to face, eye to eye, knee to knee

(probably not cheek to cheek). This setup encourages the use of

“indoor voices” and prevents noisy, time-wasting shuffling around mid-

lesson. For pairs, we like to have the kids simply push their desks

together or sit directly across a table from each other. In this lesson, sit-

ting side by side works best because both students will be reading from

the same page.

TL_Fiction_Chapter1-3_Layout 1 2/6/13 12:00 PM Page 8

CHAPTER 2 / How to Use This Book

Common Core Standards

Supported: Lists CCSS

skills and principles

addressed in the lesson.

If you are using a basal or anthology, it probably tells you little or nothing about

how to set up successful partner or small-group work in your class. (You may

find some notes about social skills in the teacher’s edition). If you skipped our

Chapter 2, check it out: there’s some helpful information about training kids for

small-group work back on pages 10–13. Making these crucial advance moves,

such as setting up partners first and making sure they are positioned to commu-

nicate, makes a huge difference with our lessons—or the ones in your textbook.

Still have kids who don’t want to work with each other? Tell them that your stan-

dard is that “everybody works with everybody in here.” Then form partners daily,

by random drawing, so the pairing is not about you—and so that everyone

eventually does work with everyone else. Acquaintance builds friendliness.

HAPTER

3 / Sharing Literature Aloud

Shoptalk

Lesson 3.1 / Pair Share

STEP 2

Turn and talk. Pose the question that we previewed earlier: If you had

to escape from your house with only three things (assuming your family

and pets are OK), what would you take? Turn to your partner and share

your answers. Don’t forget to explain why these items are important to

you. What do they symbolize or represent?

STEP 3

Introduce and pass out the story. Each pair receives two hand-

outs, the beginning and the end of the story, face down. OK, first figure

out which of you two has the earliest birthday in the year. Got it? OK, the

person with the earliest birthday gets the first half of the story, and the

other gets the ending. As I pass this story out to you, I want you to keep

them face down for the time being. No peeking!

STEP 4

Give instructions. Early birthdays, ready? When I say go, turn your

paper over and begin reading aloud. Make sure you put the story in the

middle so that your partner can follow along. Once you finish reading,

stop and talk. Share your reactions, talk about what’s going on and why

the character chose not to take those items. Be sure that both you and

your partner contribute and that you actively challenge each other to go

into detail and really explain your thoughts.

When you are finished discussing the first half, the late birthdays should

turn their sheet over, put it between you, and then read aloud as your

partner follows along. After reading, have another discussion following

the same guidelines. Except this time, you need to talk about what the

character did take with him.

STEP 5

Concluding pairs discussion. I see that most of you have finished.

Before we share in a large group, I want you to recall the items you would

have taken in an emergency and compare yourselves to the story charac-

ter. What did you have in common? What things were different?

STEP 6

Share with the whole class. How did you explain what this charac-

ter actually took versus what he might have taken when he thought about

it later? What might these items symbolize? How did your “emergency

items” compare with the character’s choices?

Don’t prolong the sharing. Just get a few quick responses to each of the

questions. The important conversational work took place as the pairs

discussed together.

Even simpler: While we usually complicate things in these variations, this les-

son actually has some fun wrinkles already. So we’ll just mention a simpler ver-

sion for this one. Eliminate the cutting in half and just let partners gobble the

story in one gulp (thirty seconds?), then get into that turn-and-talk.

COMMON CORE

STANDARDS SUPPORTED

• Read closely to determine

what the text says explicitly

and to make logical

inferences from it; cite

specific textual evidence

when writing or speaking to

support conclusions drawn

from the text.

(CCRA.R.1)

• Interpret words and phrases

as they are used in a text,

including figurative

meanings.

(CCRA.R.4)

• Assess how point of view

shapes the content and style

of a text.

(CCRA.R.6)

• Participate effectively in a

range of conversations and

collaborations.

(CCRA.SL.1)

Variation

Variations: In this section you’ll

find specific ways you can vary,

modify, or extend the lesson.

Some of these variations can

extend the lesson into the

following class period.

Shoptalk: Here we offer

comments about when to use

the lesson, how to coordinate

it with your textbook (if you

have one), and other teaching

topics we’d like to share.

Web Support: All the

charts, lists, or forms

that need to be

projected for any lesson are on our

website, www.heinemann.com

/textsandlessonsliterature.

TL_Fiction_Chapter1-3_Layout 1 2/6/13 12:28 PM Page 9

So we chose these three books as “exemplar texts” in showing how you can

use our lessons to teach a novel. Basically, you’ll see us stringing together a log-

ical sequence of strategy lessons from Chapters 3 through 9, with bits of con-

nective tissue added where needed. Of course, the point of this chapter is not

these three specific books, but the process by which you can build an engaged,

interactive, and standards-friendly approach to any novel.

Chapter 12: Extending the Texts and Lessons

While this book provides sixty-five great reading selections, there are about 180

days in most of our school years! Hmm, doing the arithmetic, you could run out

of text around New Year’s and be hungry for more. In this short chapter, we give

away all of our secrets for finding more short, kid-friendly literature selections.

We offer bibliographies for the short-short story genre, for poetry, and for

images and artworks. We also explain how you can write your own one-page

wonders for kids. Really, you can.

Working in Groups

These lessons are all highly interactive and collaborative, because that’s what

part of what engages kids and gets them thinking. The Common Core Standards

also push pretty hard for us to get students working with each other. The Speak-

ing and Listening anchor standards are quite general, and most of our lessons

address many or all anchors.

But just for fun, let’s drill down into the more specific Speaking and Listen-

ing Standards for grades 9–10 as an example. Students should:

1. Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions

(one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades

9–10 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their

own clearly and persuasively.

a. Come to discussions prepared, having read and researched material

under study; explicitly draw on that preparation by referring to evi-

dence from texts and other research on the topic or issue to stimulate a

thoughtful, well-reasoned exchange of ideas.

b. Work with peers to set rules for collegial discussions and decision-making

(e.g., informal consensus, taking votes on key issues, presentation of alter-

nate views), clear goals and deadlines, and individual roles as needed.

c. Propel conversations by posing and responding to questions that relate

the current discussion to broader themes or larger ideas; actively incor-

porate others into the discussion; and clarify, verify, or challenge ideas

and conclusions.

d. Respond thoughtfully to diverse perspectives, summarize points of

agreement and disagreement, and, when warranted, qualify or justify

their own views and understanding and make new connections in light

of the evidence and reasoning presented.

In every one of our lessons, students are interacting in just these ways.

CHAPTER 2 / How to Use This Book

When we started teaching,

there was one tool for display-

ing documents to a whole

class: the overhead projector.

Today, there are a million ways

of projecting material: docu-

ment cameras, smart boards,

whiteboards, iPads, you name

it. Many of our lessons use

instructions or images or short

chunks of text, which, though

they are included in the book,

work much better if projected

for the class. So we have

placed these on our website

and provided additional links

that were active at the time of

publication (www.heinemann

.com/textsandlessonslitera

ture).

PROJECTION

TL_Fiction_Chapter1-3_Layout 1 2/6/13 12:00 PM Page 10

If you worry that your students might not be ready to collaborate as the CCSS

requires, you are not alone. For a variety of reasons, teenage students may find it

hard to manifest the focus, friendliness, and support that these face-to-face meet-

ings require. So we have designed our lessons to enhance on-task conversations.

• The readings are interesting.

• The instructions are explicit.

• Every kid-kid meeting is highly structured.

• Every lesson follows a “socially incremental” design. Kids typically

begin working with just one other person (more controlled than

starting in groups of four or five).

• Once collaboration is established, kids can move from pairs to

small groups.

• Finally (and always) lessons finish in a whole-class discussion,

orchestrated by the teacher.

As you can already see, we rely extensively on pairs or partners in these

lessons—and in all our work with young people. When students are meeting

with just one other learner, they experience maximum “positive social pressure.”

That means both persons totally need each other to complete the task. There’s

no chance to slough off and hope other group members will pick up the slack.

There are no other members—you two are it! So you have to pay attention, lis-

ten carefully, speak up, and take on your share of the work. With pairs, there

tend to be fewer distractions, sidetracks, and disputes of the kind we sometimes

have to manage in larger groups.

CHAPTER 2 / How to Use This Book

These lessons are generally pretty low-tech. Mostly, you just photocopy the articles and

prepare kids to have meaningful conversations. But there are a few supplies we like to

have around:

• Post-it notes of various sizes

• Index cards, 3x5-inch and 4x6-inch varieties

• Large chart paper or newsprint and tape

• Fat and skinny markers in assorted colors

• Clipboards: When kids are working with short selections, they may be moving around

the room, sitting on the floor, meeting in various groups. They’ll need to bring a hard

writing surface. A weighty textbook works, but feather-light clipboards were made to

be portable desks.

• A projector that allows you to show the lesson instructions we’ve parked for you on our

website, as well as images, work samples, and web pages related to the lessons.

• In our ideal classroom, kids would also have individual tablet computers, on which we

can preload great text and images, and then kids can annotate and write about them,

joining in digital conversations in live or online settings. However, every student must

have the exact same device and be able to use it as fluently as paper and pencil, or the

technology can actually distract from the brisk pace of these lessons.

MATERIALS AND EQUIPMENT

TL_Fiction_Chapter1-3_Layout 1 2/6/13 12:00 PM Page 11

In almost every lesson, you’ll have to decide how to form pairs (or groups

of three or four), and there is a lot to think about. You already know what hap-

pens when you let friends work with each other; lots of kids get left out, while

the friend partners have plenty to talk about, other than your lesson. Instead,

keep mixing kids up, arranging different partners for every activity, every day.

This is part of your community building. Everyone gets to know everyone. No

one gets to say, “I won’t work with him.” Let’s learn from kindergarten: write each

kid’s name on a popsicle stick and keep them in a coffee mug. When it’s time to

pick partners, students draw from the mug. This way, pairings are random; it’s

never about you personally forcing certain kids to work together. No arguments

and no groaning allowed. As the weeks unfold and kids’ collaboration skills are

honed in pair work, we feel more comfortable putting them in small groups dur-

ing our lessons. And later in the year, kids will have partners or groups that stay

together over many days, as in book clubs, writing circles, and inquiry circles.

Maybe you have a class that needs even more support to succeed at stu-

dent-led discussion. In such situations, the key is to explicitly teach the social

skills kids need, before they head off into small groups. This is a topic we have

treated extensively in other books, and won’t re-spout our wisdom here. But for

those who want more information on explicit social skill lessons, we have

posted some links on the book’s website.

Below is a chart showing seven key collaboration strategies kids need to

develop, adapted from Smokey and Stephanie Harvey’s Comprehension and

Collaboration (2009). As you can see, the chart gives both positive and negative

examples of each skill. Maybe you will recognize some of your own students

there, hopefully not in the right-hand column.

CHAPTER 2 / How to Use This Book

STRATEGY EXAMPLES/ACTIONS SOUNDS LIKE DOESN’T SOUND LIKE

1. Be responsible

to the group

• Be prepared: work completed,

materials and notes in hand

• Bring interesting questions/ideas to

the discussion

• Fess up if unprepared

• Focus on the work and members

• Establish and live by your group’s

ground rules

• Settle issues within the group

“Does everyone have their

reading? Good, let’s get

going.”

“I’m sorry, guys, I didn’t get

the reading done.”

“OK, then today you’ll take

notes on our conversation.”

“What? There’s a meeting?”

“I left my stuff in my locker.”

“Teacher, Bobby keeps

distracting our group.”

2. Listen

actively

• Use names

• Make eye contact

• Nod, confirm, look interested

• Lean in, sit close together

• Summarize or paraphrase

“Joe, pull your chair up

closer.”

“Fran, I think I heard you

say . . . ”

“So you think . . . ”

“I’m not sitting by you.”

Huh?”

TL_Fiction_Chapter1-3_Layout 1 2/6/13 12:00 PM Page 12

STRATEGY EXAMPLES/ACTIONS SOUNDS LIKE DOESN’T SOUND LIKE

CHAPTER 2 / How to Use This Book

4. Share the air

and encourage

others

• Take turns

• Be aware of who’s contributing,

and work to even out the airtime

• Monitor yourself for dominating or

shirking the conversation

• Invite others in

• Receive others’ ideas respectfully

• Use talking stick or poker chips

if needed

“What do you think,

Wendy?”

“I better finish my point and

let someone else talk.”

“That’s a cool idea, Tom.”

“Can you say more about

that, Chris?”

“Blah blah blah blah blah

blah blah blah . . . ”

“I pass.”

5. Prove your

point/support

your view

• Explain, give examples

• Refer to specific passages

• Read aloud important sections

• Dig deeper into the text, reread

important parts

“I think Jim treats Huck as a

son because . . . ”

“Right here on page 15 it

says that . . .”

“This book is dumb.”

“Why open the book?”

“Well, that’s my opinion

anyway.”

6. Disagree

agreeably

• Be tolerant of other’s ideas

• Speak up—offer a different

viewpoint and don’t be steamrolled

• Use neutral language: “I was thinking

of it this way”

• Celebrate and enjoy divergent

viewpoints

“Wow, I thought of

something totally different.”

“I can see your point, but

what about . . . ”

“I’m glad you brought that

up; I never would have seen

it that way.”

“You are so wrong!”

“What book are

you

reading?”

“No way!”

7. Reflect and

correct

• Identify specific behaviors that helped

or hurt the discussion

• Talk openly about problems

• Make plans to try out new strategies

at the next meeting and then review

their effectiveness

“What went well today and

where did we run into

problems?”

“OK, so what will we do

differently during our next

meeting?”

“Let’s write down our plan.”

“We rocked.”

“We sucked.”

“It was OK.”

3. Speak up

• Join in, speak often, be active

• Use a moderate voice level

• Connect your ideas with what others

just said

• Overcome your shyness

• Ask lead and follow-up questions

• Use your notes or annotations, or

drawings

“What you said just

reminded me of . . . ”

“What made you feel that

way?”

(silence)

Not using/looking at notes

when conversation lulls

TL_Fiction_Chapter1-3_Layout 1 2/6/13 12:00 PM Page 13

This resource stands on its own, offering

immediately usable readings and lan-

guage for collaborative lessons in think-

ing about literature. But it was also

created to be used with several recent books by our

“family” of coauthors. Over the past ten years, our own

collaborative group has created a library of books

focused on building students’ knowledge and skill

through the direct teaching of learning strategies in the

context of challenging inquiry units, extensive peer col-

laboration, and practical, formative assessments.

Among these books are:

• Best Practice: Bringing Standards to Life

in America’s Classrooms, 4th edition

(Zemelman, Daniels, and Hyde 2012)

• Best Practice Video Companion (Zemelman

and Daniels 2012)

• Comprehension Going Forward (Daniels 2011)

• Texts and Lessons for Content-Area Reading

(Daniels and Steineke 2011)

• Assessment Live: 10 Real-Time Ways for Kids to

Show What They Know—and Meet the Standards

(Steineke 2009)

• Comprehension and Collaboration: Inquiry Circles

in Action (Harvey and Daniels 2009)

• Mini-lessons for Literature Circles (Daniels and

Steineke 2006)

• Content-Area Writing: Every Teacher’s Guide

(Daniels, Zemelman, and Steineke 2005)

• Subjects Matter: Every Teacher’s Guide to

Content-Area Reading (Daniels and Zemelman

2004)

• Reading and Writing Together (Steineke 2003)

ALL IN THE FAMILY

CHAPTER 2 / How to Use This Book

These seven strategies are embedded over and over again in this book’s les-

sons. As you teach them, your kids will be getting plenty of practice and becom-

ing better partners and group members—and meeting the Speaking and

Listening Standards for the Common Core or your state.

How Proficient Readers Think

Here’s a question: How do effective, veteran readers think when they are reading

stories, poems, literary essays, or plays? What goes on in their minds? Exactly how

do they turn those little marks on the page into understanding and knowledge in

their brains—especially when the text is hard or old or boring? If there are some

effective patterns and strategies, we need to know what they are, so we can teach

them to the kids. Like ASAP.

Happily for us, some reliable and well-replicated research (Pearson and

Gallagher 1983; Pearson, Roehler, Dole, and Duffy 1992; Daniels 2011) give us a

very pretty clear picture of the key cognitive strategies in play. Powerful readers:

Monitor their comprehension Draw inferences

Connect to background knowledge Determine what’s important

Visualize and make sensory images Synthesize and summarize meaning

Ask questions of the text

TL_Fiction_Chapter1-3_Layout 1 2/6/13 12:00 PM Page 14

CHAPTER 2 / How to Use This Book

Chapter 4 offers seven lessons, each dedicated to one of these cognitive

strategies, in the above order. But these seven core reading strategies are fully

incorporated throughout the book; kids will practice each one repeatedly as you

lead them through the readings, activities, and conversations.

Assessment

If you are going to devote ten minutes or twenty-five minutes or a whole class

period to one of these lessons, the question naturally arises: How do I grade

this? After all, in today’s schools, it seems like we have to assess, or at least assign

a grade to, almost any activity kids spend time on.

It is important to recognize that these lessons, by themselves, do not lead to

final public outcomes, such as polished essays or crafted speeches. They can

and often do serve as starting points for just such projects, which require extra

time and support for their completion. But as they stand, our lessons are more

like guided practice, opportunities for kids to read and write and talk to learn.

That requires an appropriate approach to assessment.

Participation Points

You can certainly give kids points or grades for effective participation in these

lessons. But if you start qualitatively grading every piece of kids’ work on activi-

ties like these, trying to defend the difference between a 78 and a 23, you’re going

to give up huge chunks of your own time marking, scoring, and justifying. Maybe

this is some of our old Chicago “tough love” creeping in, but for smaller everyday

assignments, we use binary grading: yes/no, on/off, all/nothing. We give 10 points

for full participation and 0 points for non-full participation. No 3s, no 7.5s. Ten or

zero, that’s it.

Our colleague Jim Vopat has brought some poetry to this kind of grading in

his book Writing Circles (2009). Jim calls this “good faith effort.” If a student

shows up prepared to work, having all the necessary materials (reading done,

notes ready), joins in the work with energy, and carries a fair share of the work—

that’s a “good faith effort” and earns full points. From a practical point of view,

this means we only need to keep track of the few kids who don’t put forth that

GFE, and remember to enter that zero in our gradebook later on.

Still, let’s be honest. Giving points is not assessment, it’s just grading. When

we want to get serious and really scrutinize kids’ thinking in these activities, we

have to take further steps.

Collect and Save Student Work

As kids do the activities in these forty-five lessons, they naturally create and leave

behind writings, lists, drawings, notes, and other tracks of their thinking. So why

pop a quiz? Instead, collect, study, and save the naturally occurring by-products

of kids’ learning. These authentic artifacts, this residue of thinking, are far more

meaningful than a disembodied “72” in your gradebook. The kids’ own creations

are also far more relevant in a parent conference or a principal evaluation than a

string of point totals in a gradebook.

TL_Fiction_Chapter1-3_Layout 1 2/6/13 12:00 PM Page 15

OBSERVATION CHART

STUDENT NAME “GOOD FAITH” QUOTE THINKING SOCIAL SKILLS

TL_Fiction_Chapter1-3_Layout 1 2/6/13 12:00 PM Page 16

Observe Kids at Work

The form on page 16 is a tool we use when sitting with a group of kids, watching

them work on a lesson together. As you can see, this form incorporates Vopat’s

good faith idea and then goes much further. As we listen in on kids, we jot down

one memorable quote from each student and reflect on what kind of thinking

this comment or question represents; we also take notes on any conspicuous

use (or neglect) of the collaboration skills called for in the lesson.

Offer Meaningful Performance Opportunities

When the time comes to assign grades for kids’ work over long stretches of time

and big chunks of content, we traditionally make up a big test and add that

score to the points kids have earned along the way. Even as we do this, we qui-

etly recognize that this assessment system invites cramming, superficiality, and

the wholesale forgetting of content.

Instead, we like to devise authentic events at which kids share or perform

their learning for an engaged audience—and then we use a rubric that care-

fully defines a successful performance to derive each kid’s grade. This might

mean a polished essay published on the web, a series of tableaux performed

with a group, or a full-scale public debate or talk show enactment. Nancy has

written a whole book with ideas on this kind of performance process called

Assessment Live: 10 Real-Time Ways for Kids to Show What They Know—and

Meet the Standards (Heinemann 2009).

Have Fun

We’re serious about putting this “F-word” back into school. The two of us had a

blast searching out these amazing short texts and using them with kids around

the country. In those classrooms, everyone seemed to have a good time reading,

savoring, analyzing, debating, and even rereading these little literary gemstones.

Field-testing these lessons with kids has reminded us that “all adolescents want

to work hard and do well,” as the brilliant British educator Charity James once

wrote in her book Young Lives at Stake: The Education of Adolescents.

Or you can just call it “rigor without the mortis.”

Enjoy!

Smokey and Nancy

CHAPTER 2 / How to Use This Book

TL_Fiction_Chapter1-3_Layout 1 2/6/13 12:00 PM Page 17

TEXT

“We? #5” by Helen

Phillips

TIME

20 Minutes

GROUPING SEQUENCE

Whole

class, pairs, whole class

USED IN TEXT SET

LITERARY ARGUMENTS

The Common Core Standards want kids not just to persuade, but to argue. Interesting

choice of words. When you think about it, “persuasive” sounds pretty genteel, while

“argue” has a more aggressive connotation. The technical difference is that when we are

persuading, we only need to make our own case. But to argue, you also have to

acknowledge the other side’s position—and then crush it. These lessons reflect our belief

that to get good at this process, kids need lots of practice drawing on textual evidence to

develop an interpretation, and then testing it against others’ thinking.

LESSON 8.1

Take a Position

Remember the last episode of The Sopranos? You don’t? Then you might want to

take some time off and devote eighty-three hours to watching the complete

DVD collection. On the other hand, you can just keep reading and take our word

for what follows . . .

. . . at this point, Tony is pretty much the last man standing, since an earlier

mob war has wiped out his crew. To top it off, the feds have him cornered. Tony

waits in a diner, sitting in a booth while a suspicious-looking guy at the counter

is eyeing him. Who is this guy? Hit man? Mob celebrity stalker? Job applicant

who heard there were openings? We don’t know, but he’s sure making us nerv-

ous! The camera keeps switching between the front door, Tony, guy at the

counter. Anxiety mounts for the viewer, not so much for Tony. He seems pretty

happy; maybe his new meds are kicking in? Someone’s at the door. Oh no!

Whew, it’s only his wife, Carmella. The anxiety builds again, but then it’s just

A.J., his son. Finally Meadow walks in. Tony looks up. Screen goes blank and

stays that way for about ten seconds, and then the credits roll silently.

What the !*@#? That was it. Every viewer had to make up his/her own end-

ing based on the evidence they had gathered in the previous eighty-two

episodes. At the time the final installment aired, it created quite a buzz and

many viewers were angry. How could David Chase (writer, director, executive

producer) do this to them after they had invested half a lifetime watching that

show? The nerve of that guy! The next day, Chase stated, “I have no interest in

explaining, defending, reinterpreting, or adding to what is there.”

Yet months later Chase reneged on his “vow of silence” and claimed that

Tony didn’t die (reviving the chances of a future movie or Sopranos reunion

episode), telling the New York Daily News, “Why would we entertain people for

eight years only to give them the finger?” The ending was only an “artistic” deci-

sion. Personally we wish he had refused to give “the right answer,” but probably

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he was tired of being pilloried in YouTube comments as obsessed viewers

watched and rewatched Tony’s last five minutes. Luckily, few authors face the

same degree of scrutiny about their endings.

How many times have you had students read a story or novel, get to the

end, and say, “That’s it? What happened?” But what we really want them to say is

“Cool. I’m glad the author thought I was smart enough to use the clues to make

my own meaning.” Here’s a chance to help your students make that transition.

PREPARATION

Make a copy of “We? #5” for each student. Practice reading the story aloud.

STEP 1

Define symbolism. A symbol is usually an object or graphic that rep-

resents more than its literal meaning; it also represents an idea or quality.

Take U.S. currency, paper money. The literal value of a twenty-dollar bill

is about the same as a single—same amount of ink, same paper, same

cost of printing—yet they symbolize different values. And then there are

all the different graphics on money that are more than just decoration:

the eagle, the unfinished pyramid with the eye floating above it. We could

probably spend the whole period just examining and deciphering the cur-

rency in our wallets, but we’re not. Instead we’re going to read a story.

STEP 2

Distribute the story and read aloud. To start off, I’m going to read

this story aloud and I want you follow along. As the story unfolds, I want

you to watch for something that seems to be working as a symbol. Any

questions on what I mean by symbol? Also, I want you to notice some-

thing else. In the last paragraph, the point of view jumps from third to

first person. What do you think that’s all about?

Read aloud. (If you think the title may be confusing to kids, you can tell

them that Phillips’ book has sets of stories that are numbered under the

same title. Hence “We? #5” is the fifth story about “We,” and the number

has no significance within the story.)

STEP 3

Highlight the story symbol. What object do you think is the sym-

bol? Students should readily recognize the blank die. What led you to

believe that’s a symbol? Students should mention the repetition.

STEP 4

Reread the story. Before we talk about what the symbol might mean,

I want you to reread the story once or twice (it’s short!), and decide for

yourself: What does that blank die represent? Once you think you know,

write down your idea and make sure that you’ve found lines in the story

to support your viewpoint.

STEP 5

Monitor and coach. Let kids work for five minutes or so, checking

in and coaching the ones who haven’t marked up their sheet and jotted

some symbolism notes.

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CHAPTER 8 / Literary Arguments

COMMON CORE

STANDARDS SUPPORTED

• Read closely to determine

what the text says explicitly

and to make logical

inferences from it; cite

specific textual evidence

when writing or speaking to

support conclusions drawn

from the text.

(CCRA.R.1)

• Determine central ideas or

themes of a text and analyze

their development; summarize

the key supporting details and

ideas.

(CCRA.R.2)

• Analyze how and why ideas

develop over the course of a

text.

(CCRA.R.3)

• Interpret words and phrases

as they are used in a text,

including figurative

meanings.

(CCRA.R.4)

• Analyze the structure of

texts.

(CCRA.R.5)

• Assess how point of view

shapes the content and style

of a text.

(CCRA.R.6)

• Participate effectively in a

range of conversations and

collaborations.

(CCRA.SL.1)

Steps &

Teaching

Language

TL_Fiction_Chapter 7_8_Layout 1 2/6/13 11:49 AM Page 170

STEP 6

Pair share. Get together with your partner and discuss the blank die.

What might it symbolize? How do you know? Where’s the evidence? Listen

carefully to your partner. If you have different ideas, that’s OK. The impor-

tant thing is that you can logically defend your answer with text evidence.

STEP 7

Share out. OK, let’s hear some ideas. Anybody work with a partner who

had a completely different idea than you? Call on those students first and

have them explain their divergent opinions. Remember to always

require students to defend their opinions with text evidence. Interest-

ing. Anybody else have some other interpretations to share? I bet you’re

wondering what the right answer is, huh. I don’t know. It’s kind of like

that last episode of The Sopranos . . .

This activity lends itself to an extension into argumentative writing. Have stu-

dents use their notes to develop a strong essay defending their interpretation

of the central symbol of the story. Does the mysterious cube represent:

conquering depression

growing up

taking control of your life

breaking a bad habit

leaving your “baggage” behind

reaching out to other people

There are so many ways to look at this story and symbol. The kids will probably

surprise you with things that neither we, nor The Sopranos writing staff, would

ever think of.

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Lesson 8.1 / Take a Position

Shoptalk

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We? #5

Helen Phillips

Once there was a person whose sadness was so enormous she

knew it would kill her if she didn’t squeeze it into a cube one

centimeter by one centimeter by one centimeter. Diligently, she

set about this task. Alone in her room, she grappled with her

sadness. It was quite a beast, alternately foggy and slippery; by

the time she managed to grip it, her skin was sleek with sweat,

soaked with tears. (The sounds coming from her apartment

worried the neighbors. What was that shy little woman up to?)

She twisted her sadness like a dishrag. It strained against her,

tugged, pulled. She sat on it to shrink it down the way old-

fashioned ladies sat on their snakeskin suitcases.

Then, finally, there it was: a small white cube.

She slipped it into her pocket, went outside, noticed

orange lichen growing on tenements, ordered lemonade in a

café. The checkered floor nearly blinded her—it looked exactly

like joy, and she almost covered her eyes. But instead, she fin-

gered the thing in her pocket. Her eyes became bright prisms;

they made her irresistible, and soon she had a friend. One day,

passing some kids in the street who had just lost a die down

the sewer, she discovered a die in her pocket. “Wow, lady,” they

said. “Where’dya get a blank one?”

“Gosh,” she said, “I really can’t remember.” And she

couldn’t.

You know that book where they went all over the world

and took pictures of families in front of their homes along with

everything they owned? A hut in Kenya, a suburban house in

Texas, a Tokyo apartment? I always loved to see the precious

and unprecious items, the woven blankets and the TVs, the

families standing nervously alongside. Sometimes I look

around our home and imagine everything out on the street.

But I hope that someday, when they come to take our picture

with everything we own, it will just be us, standing before a

building, your arm around me, a blank die in my palm.

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Steps &

Teaching

Language

TEXT

“Little Brother

”

by Bruce Holland Rogers

TIME

50 Minutes

GROUPING SEQUENCE

Whole

class, pairs, groups of four, groups

of eight, whole class

USED IN TEXT SET

LESSON 8.2

Finish the Story

Go to any art museum and you will see students sitting in front of the classics

sketching away. Why? Are they practicing to be art counterfeiters? What’s a con-

vincing copy of the Mona Lisa going for these days? No, their studious practice is

making them better artists because a great way to learn technique is through

imitation. And once you’ve mastered that technique, you can reshape it and

make it your own.

Students need to do the same thing with their own writing: imitate other

writers’ style and technique. Unfortunately, when we want kids to emulate a

piece, we typically give them longish essays and then expect them to do every-

thing: come up with their own topic, find the argument, research the details,

and put it all together in a series of paragraphs that make sense. By the time

they’ve finished all of that they’re exhausted, we’re exhausted, and any atten-

tion to craft details has long been kicked to the curb.

A more manageable way for kids to practice developing an eye for craft is to

finish stories. Yes, we’ve all tried this at one time or another, but once again,

we’ll wager that the mentor text was long, like full-length novel long, and the

assignment was to write an alternative ending chapter. Instead, let’s shorten this

up. Write the end of a story, but use a story short enough to emulate. And don’t

rewrite the ending. Just withhold the original ending and don’t even read it until

you’ve heard all the other alternatives. Who knows? It might turn out that one of

your students writes a more satisfying ending than the original.

PREPARATION

Each student needs a copy of just the first part of “Little Brother

.” We didn’t

label it Part 1 because we want the kids to think that’s the whole story. Part 2,

which begins with “Later, when Mommy came in to the living room . . . ,” will be

read aloud at the end of the lesson.

Determine how pairs will form to work together to write the ending. Determine

how those pairs will combine to form groups of four, and how they will later

combine to form groups of eight.

STEP 1

Pass out and introduce the story. As I read the first few paragraphs

of this story aloud, I want you to pay attention to what’s going on, as well

as details on character and setting. Read the first three paragraphs aloud

and then stop. What did you notice in these first few paragraphs? Tak e

answers. Be sure to redirect the kids back to the details about Peter’s lit-

tle brother that make him different from a typical baby.

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STEP 2

Give students time to read the story. You’ve got the details right

and you are following the story fine, so I’m confident you can read the rest

on your own. Go ahead and do that now. Be sure to pay close attention to

the dynamics between Peter, his mother, and his new little brother.

STEP 3

Examine craft. That story ended kind of suddenly, didn’t it? Actually,

there’s a little bit more to go, but before we finish it up I want you to pause

and take a look at the author’s style. How does the author put this story

together? Turn to your partner and take a look at the last section you read.

Mark what you notice right on the text. Try to label what you see.

Give pairs a few minutes to reread, discuss, and mark. Call them back

and get suggestions. Students will probably notice these items.

• Third person-limited. We only know what Peter is thinking.

• Section starts and ends with narration: setting, plot.

• Most of the story told in dialogue.

• Lots of tension. Explanation points after what characters say.

• Arguing.

• Mom’s explanations are longer than Peter’s.

• Peter’s little brother’s name is Little Brother

Good. You’ve noticed that there is a specific style and rhythm to this story

and that the author has made some specific choices about characteriza-

tion and advancing the story.

STEP 4

Give directions. Remember when I said that this wasn’t the end of the

story? Now we’re going to get to that. Everyone stay with your partner, but

get out a sheet of loose-leaf paper. How do you think the story is going to

end? That’s for you and your partner to figure out. Together you’re going to

write the ending in the style we just investigated. Now, don’t panic. This is

a short story. The original ending has 226 words, so it’s not going to be any

longer than about one to one and a half pages, depending on whether you

type or handwrite it. What questions do you have? Answer questions.

Oh, and even though you are working together, I want both of you to write

down the ending you come up with so that you each have your own copy.

Though you’ll be tempted, don’t share your ideas with any other pairs. We

want the endings to be a surprise, and they won’t be if you tell others what

you’re writing about. And remember, what you write has to be G-rated—

we’re still at school. Go ahead and get started.

STEP 5

Monitor pairs. Keep pairs focused on each other and on avoiding

conversations with other groups that will slow down the writing. If a pair

is struggling, direct them to reread the previous story section with this

question in mind: How is Peter going to resolve this conflict with Little

Brother

? The writing should take about ten minutes.

174

CHAPTER 8 / Literary Arguments

COMMON CORE

STANDARDS SUPPORTED

• Read closely to determine

what the text says explicitly

and to make logical

inferences from it; cite

specific textual evidence

when writing or speaking to

support conclusions drawn

from the text.

(CCRA.R.1)

• Analyze how and why

individuals, events, or ideas

develop and interact over the

course of a text.

(CCRA.R.3)

• Assess how point of view

shapes the content and style

of a text.

(CCRA.R.6)

• Write narratives to develop

imagined experiences or

events.

(CCRA.W.3)

• Apply knowledge of language

to understand how language

functions in different

contexts, to make effective

choices for meaning or style,

and to comprehend more

fully when reading or

listening.

(CCRA.L.3)

• Participate effectively in a

range of conversations and

collaborations.

(CCRA.SL.1)

TL_Fiction_Chapter 7_8_Layout 1 2/6/13 11:49 AM Page 174

STEP 6

Pairs combine to form groups of four. It’s time to hear what you

wrote. I want each pair to get with another pair to form a group of four.

Partners, decide who will be your reader. The job in your group of four is

to listen to both endings and decide which one does the best job matching

the author’s style and the clues in the first part of the story. Each group of

four will choose of their two pieces to read aloud in the next round.

Decide which pair is going first and get started.

STEP 7

Groups of four pair up to form groups of eight. OK, every group

should know which piece you chose. Be sure to take that piece with you

for the next step. Everyone stand up. Groups of four, point to another

nearby group and move together so that you are a group of eight. Pay

attention because I’m going to assign you to a different part of the room

for your “on your feet” meeting.

Direct groups to various corners and standable spaces. It’s your new

group’s job to listen to both of the endings brought to the meeting and

decide which one most resembles the author’s style and completes the

story. That is the piece your group of eight will present to the class. Decide

who’s going first and get started.

STEP 8

Monitor groups of eight. This shouldn’t take long. Ascertain that

each group has picked one piece to present to the whole class and

make sure they know who is going to read it aloud. At this point, stu-

dents can return to their seats or remain standing and listening

respectfully. It will be easier to manage which groups have presented if

the groups remain standing.

STEP 9

Chosen pieces are read to the class. Choose groups at random to

send their reader up to the front. Encourage readers to make it interest-

ing and dramatic. Keep it brisk. After each piece is read, call for a big

round of applause. This shouldn’t take long since you will be listening

to only one piece from each group of eight students. Collect the pieces

afterwards if you want, or have students file them in their binders for

later retrieval.

STEP 10

Read the original ending aloud. Then ask: Out of all the endings

you heard, which one worked best? What was it about the writing that

influenced your decision?

To tell the truth: That was once the name of a game show where three people

claimed to have a certain accomplishment or career, and the panelists had to

decide which one was real and which two were the imposters. This variation

works the same way. After the groups of eight have met and made their choices,

collect those stories. Assuming that kids have created their endings on com-

puters, grab those files. If handwritten, type them up, along with the last part of

the original story, so that they look almost identical. Just identify the different

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Lesson 8.2 / Finish the Story

Variation

TL_Fiction_Chapter 7_8_Layout 1 2/6/13 11:49 AM Page 175

endings with letters or numbers. Make copies of this “endings collection” for

every student. Pass them out, have students read silently, and then vote on

which one they think is the original. Tell the groups that they will recognize

one piece as their own but the others should be unfamiliar. After the votes are

in, reveal the winner and the original story ending.

There’s a lot of talk these days—which we applaud—about “mentor texts.” “Little

Brother

” is a pretty good example. In the wide world of literature, there are cer-

tain pieces that particularly exemplify one or more literary elements: voice, tone,

characterization, structure, dialogue, surprise endings, whatever. These special

readings invite kids into an apprenticeship with them as readers—and, as we have

shown in this lesson, as writers. But our friend Ted DeMille makes an important

distinction about how we use these precious teaching tools: we want kids to riff

on mentor texts, to write “impersonations,” not simple imitations. Nice.

176

CHAPTER 8 / Literary Arguments

Shoptalk

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Little Brother

Bruce Holland Rogers

Peter had wanted a Little Brother

for three Christmases in a row. His

favorite TV commercials were the ones that showed just how much fun

he would have teaching Little Brother

to do all the things that he could

already do himself. But every year, Mommy had said that Peter wasn’t

ready for a Little Brother

. Until this year.

This year when Peter ran into the living room, there sat Little Brother

among all the wrapped presents, babbling baby talk, smiling his happy

smile, and patting one of the packages with his fat little hand. Peter was

so excited that he ran up and gave Little Brother

a big hug around the

neck. That was how he found out about the button. Peter’s hand pushed

against something cold on Little Brother

’s neck, and suddenly Little

Brother

wasn’t babbling any more, or even sitting up. Suddenly, Little

Brother

was limp on the floor, as lifeless as any ordinary doll.

“Peter!” Mommy said.

“I didn’t mean to!”

Mommy picked up Little Brother

, sat him in her lap, and pressed the

black button at the back of his neck. Little Brother

’s face came alive, and

it wrinkled up as if he were about to cry, but Mommy bounced him on her

knee and told him what a good boy he was. He didn’t cry after all.

“Little Brother

isn’t like your other toys, Peter,” Mommy said. “You

have to be extra careful with him, as if he were a real baby.” She put Lit-

tle Brother

down on the floor, and he took tottering baby steps toward

Peter. “Why don’t you let him help open your other presents?”

So that’s what Peter did. He showed Little Brother

how to tear the

paper and open the boxes. The other toys were a fire engine, some talk-

ing books, a wagon, and lots and lots of wooden blocks. The fire engine

was the second-best present. It had lights, a siren, and hoses that blew

green gas just like the real thing. There weren’t as many presents as last

year, Mommy explained, because Little Brother

was expensive. That

was OK. Little Brother

was the best present ever!

Well, that’s what Peter thought at first. At first, everything that Little

Brother

did was funny and wonderful. Peter put all the torn wrapping

paper in the wagon, and Little Brother

took it out again and threw it on

the floor. Peter started to read a talking book, and Little Brother

came

and turned the pages too fast for the book to keep up.

But then, while Mommy went to the kitchen to cook breakfast, Peter

tried to show Little Brother

how to build a very tall tower out of blocks.

Little Brother

wasn’t interested in seeing a really tall tower. Every time

Peter had a few blocks stacked up, Little Brother

swatted the tower with

his hand and laughed. Peter laughed, too, for the first time, and the second.

But then he said, “Now watch this time. I’m going to make it really big.”

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But Little Brother

didn’t watch. The tower was only a few blocks

tall when he knocked it down.

“No!” Peter said. He grabbed hold of Little Brother

’s arm. “Don’t!”

Little Brother

’s face wrinkled. He was getting ready to cry.

Peter looked toward the kitchen and let go. “Don’t cry,” he said.

“Look, I’m building another one! Watch me build it!”

Little Brother

watched. Then he knocked the tower down.

Peter had an idea.

__________________________

When Mommy came into the living room again, Peter had built a tower

that was taller than he was, the best tower he had ever made. “Look!”

he said.

But Mommy didn’t even look at the tower. “Peter!” She picked up

Little Brother

, put him on her lap, and pressed the button to turn him

back on. As soon as he was on, Little Brother

started to scream. His face

turned red.

“I didn’t mean to!”

“Peter, I told you! He’s not like your other toys. When you turn him

off, he can’t move but he can still see and hear. He can still feel. And it

scares him.”

“He was knocking down my blocks.”

“Babies do things like that,” Mommy said. “That’s what it’s like to

have a baby brother.”

Little Brother

howled.

“He’s mine,” Peter said too quietly for Mommy to hear. But when Lit-

tle Brother

had calmed down, Mommy put him back on the floor and

Peter let him toddle over and knock down the tower.

Mommy told Peter to clean up the wrapping paper, and she went

back into the kitchen. Peter had already picked up the wrapping paper

once, and she hadn’t said thank you. She hadn’t even noticed.

Peter wadded the paper into angry balls and threw them one at a

time into the wagon until it was almost full. That’s when Little Brother

broke the fire engine. Peter turned just in time to see him lift the engine

up over his head and let it drop.

“No!” Peter shouted. The windshield cracked and popped out as the

fire engine hit the floor. Broken. Peter hadn’t even played with it once,

and his best Christmas present was broken.

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Little Brother

Bruce Holland Rogers

Part 2

Later, when Mommy came into the living room, she didn’t thank Peter for

picking up all the wrapping paper. Instead, she scooped up Little Brother

and turned him on again. He trembled and screeched louder than ever.

“My God! How long has he been off?” Mommy demanded.

“I don’t like him!”

“Peter, it scares him! Listen to him!”

“I hate him! Take him back!”

“You are not to turn him off again. Ever!”

“He’s mine!” Peter shouted. “He’s mine and I can do what I want

with him! He broke my fire engine!”

“He’s a baby!”

“He’s stupid! I hate him! Take him back!”

“You are going to learn to be nice with him.”

“I’ll turn him off if you don’t take him back. I’ll turn him off and hide

him someplace where you can’t find him!”

“Peter!” Mommy said, and she was angry. She was angrier than he’d

ever seen her before. She put Little Brother

down and took a step

toward Peter. She would punish him. Peter didn’t care. He was angry, too.

“I’ll do it!” he yelled. “I’ll turn him off and hide him someplace dark!”

“You’ll do no such thing!” Mommy said. She grabbed his arm and

spun him around. The spanking would come next.

But it didn’t. Instead he felt her fingers searching for something at

the back of his neck.

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LESSON 8.3

Arguing Both Sides

The thing that makes literature so compelling is the human condition, the

moral dilemma. Should George have shot Lenny in Of Mice and Men? In One

Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, did Randle McMurphy ultimately help his fellow

patients or harm them? In Walter Dean Myers’ book Monster, is sixteen-year old

Steve Harmon truly a monster, as the prosecutor declares at his trial?

If you start looking at the literature you teach, you’ll find compelling argu-

ment possibilities in most of your pieces, even poetry. And you know what?

That’s good because the Common Core wants kids arguing, big-time. As a mat-

ter of fact, if you examine the Core Standards closely, you’ll find argumentation

built into the nonfiction reading, writing, and speaking and listening standards.

And, even though argument doesn’t play as prevalent a role in the literature

standards, we shouldn’t ignore it: making a case is making a case. When litera-

ture is the body of evidence, students must find text details and draw inferences

as they develop their supports. Then they must present their conclusions artic-

ulately, while also paying close attention to the opposing viewpoint in order to

refute it. And to complete the cycle of reasoning, students then switch sides to

argue the opposing viewpoint as confidently as they did their own.

PREPARATION

Each student will need a copy of the story. Students will be working in two sets

of pairs: they will have a “shoulder partner” (a student sitting beside them) and a

“face partner” (one across a table or possibly behind them). With shoulder part-

ners, students will be planning their arguments. With the face partners, they will

be doing the actual arguing. Kids need to be able to turn quickly between two

different partners, so think about how best to work this in your room.

Grab the projectable list of argument steps from the website (it also appears on

page 183).

STEP 1

Read and annotate the story. As you read this story, pay attention to

details of plot, setting, and character. Underline words or passages that

seem important and jot down questions that will help you discuss the

characters. If you finish the story before I call time, reread it and see what

else you notice.

STEP 2

Preparation partners discuss the story. Turn to your shoulder

partner and share what you’ve underlined. When you pose a question, be

sure to let your partner answer first before you share your thoughts. Allow

three minutes. Students might discuss:

How does Elaine feel about Troy?

Why does Elaine keep the job if it’s boring and she dislikes her coworkers?

Steps &

Teaching

Language

TEXT

“The Wallet,”

by Andrew McCuaig

TIME

50 Minutes

GROUPING SEQUENCE

Individ-

uals, pairs, groups of four, pairs

USED IN TEXT SETS

7, 8

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CHAPTER 8 / Literary Arguments

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What do you think went through Elaine’s mind when the woman

in the yellow Chevette said, “No, I mean I need money”?

What conclusions does Elaine draw when she sees the kids in

the backseat?

Why did Elaine give the woman Troy’s money instead of her own?

STEP 3

Share out. What were some of the ideas that you discussed in your

pairs? What do you think Elaine might like about her job as a tollbooth

worker? Who was that woman with the kids who drove up at the end of

the story? Why did Elaine give that woman money that wasn’t hers? Was

that the right decision?

STEP 4

Introduce argument. You seem divided on the last question I posed.

Let’s talk about that one a little bit more. But first, I want everyone to get

out a sheet of loose-leaf paper. Ready? Shoulder partners, we’re going to

count off by twos (1, 2—1, 2—1, 2—and so on). As we count off, you and

your partner should write down your number on your sheet of paper; you

will end up being a one or a two.

As this lesson progresses, students will be working with two different

partners. Their shoulder partner will be their preparation partner and

will support the same position, while their face partner will be their argu-

ment partner. Number one shoulder partners raise your hands. Good. At

the top of your papers write: Elaine did the right thing with Troy’s money.

Number two shoulder partners raise your hands. Excellent. At the top of

your papers write: Elaine should not have given Troy’s money away.

STEP 5

Give preparation instructions. With your preparation partner—

your shoulder partner—I want you to come up with a list of reasons that

support your side of the argument. Go back through the story and comb it

for details that support your side. Remember that all of the support will

not be stated in the story in black and white; you’ll need to make some

inferences using the text details as clues. Questions? Work with your part-

ner on making as complete a list as possible for your side. If you get stuck,

silently reread the story and look for other details you can use.

Go to the end of this lesson for examples of what the preparation part-

ners’ notes should look like for each side.

STEP 6

Give students time to work. They’ll probably need five to ten min-

utes. Monitor progress and cut off discussion as talk and note taking

wind down.

STEP 7

Partner one argues. It’s almost time to begin arguing, but first thank

your preparation partner for all the help in getting ready. Now turn to

your face partner. If I planned this correctly, you should be facing someone

who has the opposing viewpoint. Everybody good? Number ones—Elaine

did the right thing—you’re going to argue your position first. I’m going to

give you one minute to convince your partner that Elaine did the right

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Lesson 8.3 / Arguing Both Sides

COMMON CORE

STANDARDS SUPPORTED

• Read closely to determine

what the text says explicitly

and to make logical

inferences from it; cite

specific textual evidence

when writing or speaking to

support conclusions drawn

from the text.

(CCRA.R.1)

• Analyze how and why

individuals develop and

interact over the course of a

text.

(CCRA.R.3)

• Prepare for and participate

effectively in a range of

conversations and

collaborations with diverse

partners, building on others’

ideas and expressing their

own clearly and persuasively.

(CCRA.SL.1)

• Demonstrate understanding

of nuances in word

meanings.

(L.CCR.5)

TL_Fiction_Chapter 7_8_Layout 1 2/6/13 11:49 AM Page 181

thing giving Tony’s money to that woman. Number twos, you need to just

listen carefully. You can’t talk, but you can take notes. As a matter of fact,

I recommend you do take notes because they are going to come in handy

later. Any questions? All right—go!

STEP 8

Partner two argues. Stop! The minute is up. Now it’s partner num-

ber two’s turn to argue why Elaine should not have given away Tony’s

money. Same rules apply. Number ones, you can only listen, and you

should take notes on your opponent’s arguments. Go!

STEP 9

Refutation preparation. Stop! Turn back to your shoulder partner.

What was the weakest argument your opponent gave you? Why was it

weak? Talk this over with your preparation partner and decide how you

will prove this with further points from your side.

STEP 10

Give pairs time to work. This will only take about three minutes.

STEP 11

Refutation. Get back with your argument partner. Each side is going

to get one minute to point out the flaws in their opponent’s arguments,

but this time the opponents can talk back. Number ones, you are up. Go!

Call time after one minute. Stop! Number twos, now it’s your turn. Same

rules apply. Go! If time grows short, you can jump to Step 14, have stu-

dents drop positions, and work in their groups of four to come up with

the best solution.

STEP 12

Reverse positions. Stop! Remember when I told you to take notes on

your opponent’s arguments? Now they are going to come in handy because

you and your argument partner are going to switch positions. If you were

originally a number one arguing that Elaine did the right thing, now you

are a number two arguing that she made a mistake. Number twos, you are

now number ones. Everybody understand what their new position is?

At this point, you can move directly into the final argument round or

you can add a brief meeting with the preparation partners first so they

can organize their new positions.

STEP 13

Argue new positions. Same rules apply as before. One minute for

each side. New number ones go first. Number twos will go second. Listen-

ing only. No interrupting. Begin the arguments and start timing.

STEP 14

Groups of four brainstorm solutions. Stop! Now I want argument

partners and preparation partners to form a group of four. You are no

longer arguing whether or not Elaine did the right thing. Your job now is to

come up with the best solution to Elaine’s dilemma. Your group is free to

use ideas from both sides or use new ideas that were not previously men-

tioned. Give groups a few minutes to discuss and then quickly have each

group state their solution.

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CHAPTER 8 / Literary Arguments

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STEP 15

Bring solutions back to the story. How would your group’s solu-

tion have changed the story? Have students discuss briefly back in pairs

and then conclude with some brief sharing as a few groups report out.

183

Lesson 8.3 / Arguing Both Sides

• Leaves his trash for Elaine to pick up

(sweating cup of Coke); “left his food

regularly . . . ”

• Purposely “rubs” up against her.

He sexually harasses her.

• She thinks José is a lecher as well.

• She counts the cars to fight the boredom.

• It seems like a lonely job. She’s all alone in

the booth, she doesn’t like her coworkers,

she doesn’t really talk to anyone.

• Brakes screech like she was speeding away,

maybe not even going to stop.

• Suitcase looks like it was thrown together

in seconds—“overflowing with clothes.”

• She is physically injured—gash below one

eye, face swollen and purple, dried blood at

corner of mouth.

• “Their eyes were wide and afraid.”

• Older kid is sucking thumb.

• Elaine sees the kids and puts herself in

the woman’s place. What would she hope

Elaine did?

Troy’s a jerk and Elaine doesn’t owe him

any favors.

Elaine is bored and feels disconnected

from others.

The woman in the yellow Chevette

looks like someone is chasing her,

going to kill her.

She looks like she needs to see a doctor.

The woman had two young children who

look traumatized.

Woman in Chevette has no money, no one

to turn to.

POSITION 1: Elaine did the right thing

giving Troy’s money to that woman TEXT DETAILS

Argument Steps

1. Prepare positions

2. Argue positions

3. Prepare refutation

4. Refute arguments

5. Reverse positions and argue

6. Synthesize solution

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Though this lesson seems a little complicated at first, the more you practice it,

the better the kids will get at moving quickly through the steps. Soon, this will be

a strategy that you can plug into a lesson on an almost impromptu basis. Let’s

say you’re studying The Crucible, and someone asks, “Why did Reverend Parris

ever trust his niece Abigail?” Time for a quick argument! Pair the kids and num-

ber them off. Ones argue “trust her” and twos argue “don’t trust her.” Pairs work

up their side of the argument by reviewing their notes and scanning the text for

a few minutes—and then argue.

Revisit your textbook, hunting for potential controversies that can enliven

almost any selection. Slogging through Emerson’s “Self Reliance”? Time to argue

whether “self-reliance” is an achievable reality for all Americans. When logical,

academic argument becomes routine, transferring that thinking into writing—

or Common Core assessments—will be much easier.

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CHAPTER 8 / Literary Arguments

• He’s left his wallet before and it’s always

been intact. What’s he going to think when he

finds out? Elaine might lose her job if he files

a complaint!

• That money might just be encouraging the

woman in the Chevette to jeopardize her

children’s safety. Where are they going?

Where will they stay after that money runs

out? Temporary solution.

• She assumes that the woman has been

beaten by someone and is being chased. But

maybe she just murdered someone!

• She “surreptitiously reached for Troy’s

wallet.” If she thought she was doing the

right thing, she wouldn’t have been so

sneaky.

• State police would have investigated, helped

her find a shelter, maybe get a restraining

order against who hurt her (gash, swollen

bruised face, blood on lip).

Troy trusts her. If she steals money, she

could lose her job, since her job is

working with cash.

$92 isn’t going to get that woman

very far.

Elaine’s inferences might be completely

incorrect.

Elaine knows she shouldn’t have given

Troy’s money away. She’s stealing.

If that woman was really in trouble, Elaine

should have called the state police.

POSITION 2: Elaine should not have

given Troy’s money to that woman TEXT DETAILS

Shoptalk

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THE WALLET

Andrew McCuaig

When Elaine arrived at work the first thing she noticed was that

Troy had left his wallet on the small shelf next to a half-finished

cup of Coke. Troy left his food regularly, as if she were his maid,

but he left his wallet less often—about once a month. The first

time it happened was just her second night on the job, and she

thought maybe he was testing her honesty, or, worse, that he

had created some excuse to come back and see her. He had, in

fact, returned half an hour later and deliberately rubbed his body

up against hers as he retrieved his wallet instead of just standing

at the door and asking her to hand it to him. They had made

awkward small talk in the cramped booth before he finally raised

his wallet in a salute, said good-bye and good luck and rubbed

past her again.

Now, as she settled onto the stool for her shift, she could

smell his lingering presence. She picked up the cup of Coke and

placed it in the garbage can at her feet, careful to keep it upright.

The cup had sweated out a puddle in the summer heat and she

shook her head despairingly. She lined up her piles of quarters

and dimes on the shelf in order to have something to do. Two

booths down, Jose waved at her and gave her two thumbs up, a

gesture he thought was cute. He was another lecherous type,

always spending his breaks standing at her door looking her up

and down and blowing smoke into her booth. She waved at him

so he’d turn around.

In front of her now the highway was black. Every few minutes

headlights would appear in the distance like slow trains but most

of the time the drivers would pick the automatic lanes. Then three

or four cars might come in a row and she’d be grateful to move

into a rhythm—reach, grab, turn, gather, turn, reach, good night. It

was annoying when people didn't bring their cars close enough,

but at least it allowed her to stretch more. By midnight she had

made change for twenty-six people. Several weeks ago she had

started to keep track out of boredom. Her midnight record was

seventy-two, her fewest, twelve.

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At about three o’clock a car came toward her too fast, weav-

ing like a firefly, before picking her booth. The brakes screeched,

the muffler roared: it was a little yellow Chevette, an eighties car

pocked with rust. Elaine leaned forward with her hand ready, but

the driver, a young woman, made no move to pay her toll. She

looked straight ahead, her face hidden by strings of brown hair,

both hands locked tight to the wheel. Beside her in the front seat

was a small beat-up suitcase overflowing with clothes.

Elaine said, “Good morning,” and the woman said, “I need

money.”

Elaine hesitated. “You mean you don’t have the toll?”

“No, I mean I need money.” She turned now and Elaine saw

her bleary eyes and splotched face. There was an ugly gash below

one eye and the skin around it had swollen up and turned purple.

There seemed to be an older scar on her nose, and dried blood in

the corner of her mouth. Her stare was bitter and bold and it made

Elaine look away.

She was about to raise the bar and tell her to go on ahead

when she saw movement in the backseat. Looking closer, she saw

there were two children, one about five, the other barely two, nei-

ther in car seats or seatbelts. Their eyes were wide and afraid and

Elaine realized it was this that had drawn her attention to them in

the dark. The little one held on to a gray stuffed animal, the older

one was sucking her thumb.

José was watching her; he raised his palms and scowled. She

had been trained to signal in a certain way if she was being held

up, and José seemed to be waiting for this gesture. Instead, she

gave him a thumbs up and surreptitiously reached for Troy’s wal-

let. She opened the wallet to find ninety-two dollars inside. She

pulled these bills out, wadded them in her fist and reached out to

the woman, who took the money, gripped the wheel harder and

sped away. The older girl’s face, framed by the back window,

receded into the darkness, her eyes like glowing stones.

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