The Mysteries of Harris Burdick

Product Information

Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).

MISSING IN VENICE Even with her mighty engines in reverse, the ocean liner was pulledfurther and further into the canal. Complete a Mystery Cube as a class to familiarize students with the tool and what is expected of them. Allow the class to choose one of the images in the book (and the caption that goes with it) for which to create the class Mystery Cube. illustrations. 14 captions. A picture book, then? Yes, but each scene is a loaded gun and you are the trigger.

Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes. Model for your students either on the overhead or on chart paper how you might go about beginning a list of story ideas. “I might ask myself, ‘What ideas have been bouncing around in my head lately that I haven’t had a chance to write?'” you may say — thinking aloud so your students can observe the process you are going through. Write a couple of ideas, modeling how you don’t necessarily need to write complete sentences when you are making notes to yourself. “A boy finds magic shoes in his grandmother’s attic — they make it so he can jump over trees.” “A little girl’s collection of plastic farm animals comes to life after midnight.” Use your own story-starter ideas to inspire your students to think creatively when recording their own ideas.

Praise the children on yesterday’s literacy work – they showed knowledge of the function of nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs (HA showed knowledge of the difference between common, proper and pro nouns). Choose a picture from ‘The Mysteries…’ and list all of the questions which it provokes. What do children think of the pictures? Do the captions answer any of the questions?If possible, one small spiral-bound notebook for each child (otherwise, loose-leaf paper works fine) Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.

The book is available in a Portfolio Edition which includes another image/caption pair from the story "Missing in Venice".When Chris was three years old, his family moved to a new house at the edge of Grand Rapids that was part of a development; a kind of planned neighborhood, that was still being built.