Page 74 - SpringBoard_ELD_Grade6_Flipbook

Interpret the Text Using Close reading
Learning Target
• Read closely to explain the similarities and differences between characters.
Read and Annotate
Read the excerpt from Walk Two Moons and annotate the text as you read.
■ Use the My Notes area to write questions or ideas you have about the story. ■ Underline words and phrases that people use to describe Sal.
■ Put a star next to the event that shows Sal is brave.
■ Place an exclamation mark next to a surprising realization Sal has.
■ Circle unknown words.
by Sharon Creech
Salamanca “Sal” Hiddle and her grandparents are on a cross-country trip to Idaho to see Sal’s mother. While they are on the road, Sal entertains her grandparents by telling them the “extensively strange story” of her friend Phoebe Winterbottom. The following excerpt describes Sal and Phoebe’s first face- to- face encounter.
1 Three days later, I started school and saw Phoebe again. She was in my class. Most of the kids in my new school spoke in quick, sharp bursts and dressed in stiff, new clothes and wore braces on their teeth. Most girls wore their hair in exactly the same way: in a shoulder-length “bob” (that’s what they called it) with long bangs that they repeatedly shook out of their eyes. We once had a horse who did that.
2 Everybody kept touching my hair. “Don’t you ever cut it?” they said. “Can you sit on it? How do you wash it? Is it naturally black like that? Do you use conditioner?” I couldn’t tell if they liked my hair or if they thought I looked like a whang-doodle.
3 One girl, Mary Lou Finney, said the most peculiar things, like out of the blue she would say, “Omnipotent!” or “Beef brain!” I couldn’t make any sense of it. There were Megan and Christy, who jumped up and down like parched peas, moody Beth Ann, and pink-cheeked Alex. There was Ben, who drew cartoons all day long, and a peculiar English teacher named Mr. Birkway.
4 And then there was Phoebe Winterbottom. Ben called her “Free Bee Ice Bottom” and drew a picture of a bumblebee with an ice cube on its bottom. Phoebe tore it up.
5 Phoebe was a quiet girl who stayed mostly by herself. She had a pleasant round face and huge, enormous sky-blue eyes. Around this pleasant round face, her hair— as yellow as a crow’s foot—curled in short ringlets.
aCTIVITY 1.3
My notes
novel
excerpt from
Walk Two Moons
Why do the other students keep touching Sal’s hair?
Unit 2 • The Power to Change • Part 1: Walk Two Moons 51
whang-doodle: a made-up creature
omnipotent: all powerful
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