"A (teacher) reads Doreen Cronin's Diary of a Worm. Students are listening to the earthworm reading his diary, 'June 15th: My older sister thinks she's so pretty. I told her that no matter how much time she spends looking in a mirror, her face will always look just like her rear end.' ...class giggles. After the read aloud, the teacher leads students through a reading comprehension strategy called questioning the author (Beck et al. 1997) in which the students learn to think critically about what they are reading. The teacher models this by generating a list of questions to ask the author, such as 'Is this accurate-a worm's head and tail look just alike? Can you tell a worm's head from it's tail?' Students then observe live earthworms with hand lenses and read a non-fiction book about worms in an effort to find the answer. Through this exciting lesson, students construct their own understandings about earthworm adaptations, how earthworms help the earth, and how to design and conduct simple experiments to answer questions." (More Picture-Perfect Science Lessons, Ansberry & Morgan, 2007, NSTA Press, Arlington, Virginia, p. ix)
Literature to Inspire Resources
