Teaching Resources

First 10 to respond!  Are you using TINAWS in your classroom, library, or reading it with your child at home? I have an 11×17 flyer I’d love to send to you. One side has a poster with a quote from the book so that everyone can enjoy Maike Plenzke’s cover, the other has two activities you can use to help them meet writing and math standards.  

Each activity will fit on a regular 8.5×11 sheet of paper, or you can make a larger copy of both for them to spread out on their desk....

Questions are windows. Here are a few (well, a lot) to open with your students.

Comprehension Questions and Projects

I will update these prompts periodically—making corrections and adding ideas that come to me or that other educators share with me.

Chapters 1-3 What 3 adjectives describe Raul? Write everyone’s opinion on white poster board. Defend or change your choices. Try to reach a consensus as a class. When you’ve finished the book, find new adjectives to describe Raul. How has he changed? What experiences changed him? Do the same for yourself! Write out a short paragraph describing yourself. Give it to your teacher. At the end of the year, write a new paragraph about yourself.  Compare it to the earlier...

From the cluttered desk of Dean Swift

Here’s the template for a Newsletter written by the students and teachers of One of Our Kind Boarding School :  TINAWS Newsletter You can use this for inspiration–and have students explore templates of their own–or they can handwrite or type/cut/paste into the available spaces. 

This is such a fun project, and one that might help everyone (especially you) make it through those last grim days before the winter break or that wacky week of half days during conference time.  It’s the ideal group project because every student will be responsible for writing one of the stories independently, but the grading rubric could also take into consideration how the individual parts create...