The Crow and the Pitcher
The idea: reading a text with four jobs, predict, question, clarify, sum up.
Read it
Who is in this book
-
Inkling a child of the Green Names what she notices -
Yonder Predict from the clues before you read on; a wrong guess means the story surprised you from ReadQuest -
Nettle Poke the text with why, how and what-if; questions mean you're awake from ReadQuest -
Pith Work out a hard word from the words around it from ReadQuest -
Sheaf Gather the whole passage into one armful: keep the middle, let loose details fall from ReadQuest -
Beto a child of the Green Takes things apart
Every recurring character has a short tune, so you can tell who is on stage before a word is said. The tunes play only when you tap, and the Reading Access sound switch turns them off.
The Honest Page
Which parts of this story are true, stretched or made up?
True
- "The Crow and the Pitcher" is one of Aesop's fables: a thirsty crow drops pebbles into a pitcher one by one until the water rises high enough to drink. Source
- In 2009 scientists found that rooks, relatives of crows, will drop stones into water to raise it, just like the crow in the fable. Source
- Reading with four jobs, predicting, questioning, clarifying and summarising, is a classroom routine called reciprocal teaching. Source
Stretched
- The fable printed in this book. What we simplified: It is retold in plain words. Old translations are longer, and give different morals, such as "necessity is the mother of invention".
Made up
- Stepping into the margin of a page is made up. Yonder, Nettle, Pith and Sheaf come from ReadQuest.
Tell it back
Tell the story in your own words: who was there, what went wrong, and what they found out. Then the first of four bookmarks, the predicting one goes on your belt.
On your belt: the first of four bookmarks, the predicting one.
Your belt lives on this device. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Ring the hammer for someone
Pick this book for someone younger. The link carries only the book, and it will wait for them on the Green.