The Ant and the Grasshopper
The idea: summing up in one sentence, and noticing what a moral leaves out.
Read it
Who is in this book
-
Yonder Predict from the clues before you read on; a wrong guess means the story surprised you from ReadQuest -
Pith Work out a hard word from the words around it from ReadQuest -
Beto a child of the Green Takes things apart -
Nettle Poke the text with why, how and what-if; questions mean you're awake from ReadQuest -
Inkling a child of the Green Names what she notices -
Sheaf Gather the whole passage into one armful: keep the middle, let loose details fall from ReadQuest
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 Ant and the Grasshopper" is one of Aesop's fables: an ant stores food all summer while a grasshopper sings, and in winter the ant will not share. Source
- In 1668 the French poet Jean de La Fontaine told it as a cicada and an ant, and later writers have argued about whether the ant was right. Source
- Summing up a text in your own words, keeping only the main ideas, is one of the four jobs of reciprocal teaching. Source
Stretched
- Ants store grain for the winter. What we simplified: Some kinds of ants (harvester ants) really do store seeds; many others do not, and grasshoppers do not live through the winter at all.
Made up
- Stepping into the margin of a page is made up. Yonder, Pith, Nettle 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 last of four bookmarks, the summing-up one, with a sheaf of wheat on it goes on your belt.
On your belt: the last of four bookmarks, the summing-up one, with a sheaf of wheat on it.
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.