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:
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!
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!
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:
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Connection
(text-to-self, text-to-world, text-to-text)
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Description of
the connection being made and page numbers
|
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Question
|
Possible
answer, page number that question came up
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Character Name
|
Descriptions
of character and page numbers
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Important
Information
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Page numbers,
what was important? Why is it important?
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Post-Reading
Strategy
Blabberize
Students can
create a Blabberize using blabberize.com.
students can select a poem to read and create a blabber for.
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.
