HOLES DIRECTED READING-THINKING ACTIVITY

PURPOSE OF THE STRATEGY

Using the children's picture book Sitting Ducks by Michael Bedard (New York: Putnam & Grosset, 1998.) students will call upon their creativity and experiences with children's books to predict the outcome of the story. Additionally this strategy will tie into the novel Holes with its ongoing storyline of Katherine and Sam. This roughly parallels the Sitting Ducks story of the Alligator and the Duck. This activity will utilize the students' ability to predict and anticipate. This activity heavily relies upon participation of all students. As such, this strategy will help foster class unity and comradery.

DIRECTIONS: This activity is to be used following the class reading chapter 26 in Holes. Anticipate taking twenty to thirty minutes with this activity.

STEP 1 PREDICTING – making hypotheses from small portions of the text. Cover the title on the cover of the book. Ask the class, "by looking at the cover, what do you think is the title of this book, and what is it about?" (The cover shows ducks on an assembly line.) During this step of the strategy, the teacher's role is to both activate and agitate thought by asking students to defend their hypotheses. This is a time to guess, anticipate, and hypothesize. "What do you think?" "Why do you think so?"

STEP 2 READING – students are asked to read the text to verify the accuracy of their predictions. The teacher will read Sitting Ducks page by page to the class. At the end of each page the teacher will ask questions about the story and where it is leading the reader. After page one the question could be, "A place where alligators assemble ducks, is this like anything else in our society?" Answer, any factory? Students are asked to support their predictions by locating the material in the text that will verify their responses. There are no right or wrong predictions, rather, some responses are judged to be more or less accurate than others. Write the predictions on the board for future reference. Reword the predictions so that they are accurate. Continue reading page by page, asking probing questions, until the page with the duck being hugged by the alligator in bed. This is where the story starts to change and the outcome more obvious. This is a fine point to have the students try to prove their theories about the story's outcome.

STEP 3 PROVING – During this step, students read back through the text and point out how they were able to verify their predictions. Randomly select two to four students, one at a time and have them prove their hypothesis by having you turn back to parts in the story. Give them time to explain themselves. Again, there are no correct or incorrect answers. The teacher's role at this point in the activity is to be a mentor of sorts by helping organize the discussion and turning pages of the picture book. Before continuing the story, show the class the title of the book and see if their predictions changed with that revelation.

STEP 4 REPEAT - As you continue to read the book, keep the discussion going. Ask lots of questions.

STEP 5 RELATE - Connect Sitting Ducks to Holes. To conclude this activity, make a statement similar to this to connect the two books. The relationships of Alligator - Duck and Katherine - Sam have much in common. There is one who for no fault of his own is being tortured by others and one who has a protector instinct. Fortunately in Sitting Ducks things work out and the duck is all right. What about our onion selling friend Sam? Do you thing everything is going to be all right for him?

ASSESSMENT The teacher is able to assess several things from the DR-TA. First, they are able to determine the ability of the students to read orally. Secondly, the teacher is able to determine the level of comprehension of the students. Third, the DR-TA indicates how actively students are searching for meaning within a given text. These assessments inform subsequent instruction in the text. By use of a picture book as an introduction to the more difficult text, the teacher is able to engage readers in the subsequent reading and activate schema.