Gone Fishing: A Novel in Verse

Gone Fishing (A Novel in Verse)

Gone Fishing

By: Tamera Will Wissinger

Illustrated by: Matthew Cordell

Copyright: 2015

Published by: HMH Books for Young Readers

Genre: Poetry Collection

My rating:

Reading Level: Grades 3-5

Nine-year –old Sam loves to hang out with his dad, especially when it involves fishing together.  He likes his quality time with his father so when his sister, Lucy joins in on their fishing trip, Sam is not happy.  The poems in collection with one another, build a story about a father-son bond and sibling rivalry with some added anticipation.  This humorous and charming novel tie real-life situations together in an awesome story. 

Suggested Delivery:

Individual

Words to Describe book:

Charming

Humorous

Relatable

Eventful

Clever

Useful Electronic Resources:

Teachers Guide

This resource provides a teacher’s guide that aligns with the ELA CCSS.  There are questions that students can examine before reading, while reading and after reading the novel.  The questions are thought provoking and require students to look in the text to find examples to back up their responses.  There are also questions that go beyond the text and allow students to use their inferential comprehension to respond to the questions.  Very good resource!

Teaching Ideas

Another lesson plan that aligns with the CCSS!  There are various standards for grades 3-5 in reading, writing and language.  The activities that this lesson plan asks of students are very engaging and creative.  There is one activity that I particularly liked.  The poetry stations are very creative and allow students to explore the various types of poems by asking the students to write 12 different poems that all have different themes or are written in different forms.  This is a good activity to build students background knowledge so they are better able to read the novel in verse.   The students could also try and find some of the forms and types of poems within the novel as they read, too.  Very neat concept!

Guided Lesson Plan

A guided lesson plan that lays out various activities that students can participate in while reading the novel.  There are also discussion questions- both literal and inferential- that help to keep students engaged with the text and help to assess their comprehension of the text.  This resource has some good schema–building activities for the students to get familiar with  poetry and the author and illustrator.

Teaching Opportunities:

Key Vocabulary:

Tercet - A set or group of 3 lines of verse rhyming together or connected by rhyme

Free Verse Poem- Poetry that does not rhyme or have a regular meter

Meter- The rhythm of a piece of poetry

Couplets- Two lines of verse, usually in the same meter and joined by rhyme, that form a unit

Quatrain- A stanza of four lines, especially one having alternate rhymes

Stanza- A group of lines forming the basic recurring metrical unit in a poem; a verse

Reading Strategy Suggestions to increase literal and/ or inferential comprehension:

Pre-Reading Strategy

Word Wall- Collection of words displayed visibly on the wall, bulletin board of other display surface in the classroom

The word wall would be beneficial for this novel to help students understand the different types of poems and the various vocabulary words that make up a poem.  There are a lot of words and displaying them on the wall will help the students who need to refresh their memory about a particular type of poem or important vocabulary word. 

During-Reading Strategy

Split-Page Notetaking

Example using Gone Fishing: A novel in Verse:

Connection (text-to-self, text-to-world, text-to-text)	Description of the connection being made and page numbers
Question	Possible answer, page number that question came up
Character Name	Descriptions of character and page numbers
Important Information	Page numbers, what was important? Why is it important?

Post-Reading Strategy

Blabberize

Students can create a Blabberize using blabberize.com.  students can select a poem to read and create a blabber for. 

Example Blabber

Writing Activity

Poetry Collection Activity (adaptation)

Students will create a poetry collection by writing 12 different poems in poetry stations.  The students must write their own poems in 12 different forms or types and must find examples of each type of poem in the text.  The students will write their poems and polish them to perfection.  The students will be able to present some of their poetry collection to the whole class.