From renowned Newbery-winning author Jerry Spinelli comes a powerful story about how not fitting in just might lead to an incredible life. This classic book is perfect for fans of Gordon Korman and Carl Hiaasen. Just like other kids, Zinkoff rides his bike, hopes for snow days, and wants to be like his dad when he grows up. But Zinkoff also raises his hand with all the wrong answers, trips over his own feet, and falls down with laughter over a word like "Jabip." Other kids have their own word to describe him, but Zinkoff is too busy to hear it. He doesn't know he's not like everyone else. And one winter night, Zinkoff's differences show that any name can someday become "hero." With some of his finest writing to date and great wit and humor, Jerry Spinelli creates a story about a boy's individuality surpassing the need to fit in and the genuine importance of failure. As readers follow Zinkoff from first through sixth grade, it becomes impossible not to identify with and root for him through failures and triumphs. The perfect classroom read.
Use Novel-Ties ® study guides as your total guided reading program. Reproducible pages in chapter-by-chapter format provide you with the right questions to ask, the important issues to discuss, and the organizational aids that help students get the most out of each book they read.
Students deal with the concept of the human spirit and the importance of failure. Challenge students' comprehension of the novel with a variety of question styles and a final quiz. Students describe Zinkoff's self-image as it appears in the novel. Write a triangle poem about being a mail carrier. Find the synonym of vocabulary words found in the text. Students give their impressions of the teacher's speech on Zinkoff's first day of school. Understand the idea of "unconditional love" and its value in a parent-child relationship. Create a comic strip to highlight a brief incident from the story. Aligned to your State Standards, additional crossword, word search, comprehension quiz and answer key are also included. About the Novel: Loser chronicles the childhood of Donald Zinkoff, who is one of the most unusual, endearing characters ever to grace the pages of a novel for young readers. No matter what the game, Donald never wins. He trips over his own feet, constantly raises his hand without ever knowing the correct answer, and falls down laughing at the mention of any unusual word. The novel traces Donald’s journey from first to sixth grade. It details his important friendships, marks his relationships with different teachers, and describes how he copes with various shortcomings that everyone but Donald and his parents deem terribly important.
Teaching literature unit based on the popular children's story, Tales of a fourth grade nothing. Includes the following features: sample lesson plans, pre-reading activities, biographical sketch and picture of the author, book summary, vocabulary lists and vocabulary activity ideas, quizzes, hands-on projects, cooperattive learning activities, cross-curricular activities, post-reading activities, book report ideas, research ideas, culminating activities, unit test options, and answer keys.
"At a sports-crazy NJ high school where all kids must play on a team, a group of rebels start[s] a soccer team designed to undermine the jock-culture of the school"--
“An intense snapshot of the chain reaction caused by pulling a trigger.” —Booklist (starred review) “Astonishing.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A tour de force.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) A Newbery Honor Book A Coretta Scott King Honor Book A Printz Honor Book A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021) A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Young Adult Literature Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner An Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of 2017 A Vulture Best YA Book of 2017 A Buzzfeed Best YA Book of 2017 An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds’s electrifying novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds—the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he’s going to murder the guy who killed his brother. A cannon. A strap. A piece. A biscuit. A burner. A heater. A chopper. A gat. A hammer A tool for RULE Or, you can call it a gun. That’s what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That’s where Will’s now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother’s gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he’s after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that’s when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn’s gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn’t know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck’s in the elevator? Just as Will’s trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buck’s cigarette. Will doesn’t know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES. And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END…if Will gets off that elevator. Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds.
The beloved New York Times bestselling author of the modern classic Frindle celebrates books and the joy of reading with a new school story to love! Sixth grader Alec can’t put a good book down. So when Principal Vance lays down the law—pay attention in class, or else—Alec takes action. He can’t lose all his reading time, so he starts a club. A club he intends to be the only member of. After all, reading isn’t a team sport, and no one would want to join something called the Losers Club, right? But as more and more kids find their way to Alec’s club—including his ex-friend turned bully and the girl Alec is maybe starting to like—Alec notices something. Real life might be messier than his favorite books, but it’s just as interesting. With The Losers Club, Andrew Clements brings us a new school story that’s a love letter to books and to reading and that reminds us that sometimes the best stories are the ones that happen off the page—our own! Winner of the Rhode Island Children's Book Award (2019) Winner of the International Reading Association and Children's Book Council: Children's Choices List (2018) Winner of the Garden State Children's Book Award (2020) 2021 Grand Canyon Reader Award Nominee A Kansas William White Master List Selection (2018 & 2019) An Arkansas Charlie May Simon Children's Book Award Nominee (2019) A California Young Reader Medal Nominee (2019) A Nebraska Golden Sower Award Nominee (2019) A Virginia Young Readers Program Award Nominee (2019) A Minnesota Maud Heart Lovelace Award Nominee (2019) A Missouri Mark Twain Award Nominee (2019) An Oregon Reader’s Choice Award Nominee (2019) Praise for The Losers Club! * "Clements’s latest is engaging and funny. A laugh-out-loud first purchase for all middle grade collections, and a solid read-aloud choice for classrooms."—School Library Journal, Starred Review "Clements is out to celebrate reading in all its obsessiveness, and...tosses in shout-outs to a passel of other writers. [The Losers Club] gives fried bookworms everywhere the satisfaction of knowing that friends may desert them (if only temporarily) but books never will. "—The New York Times Praise for Andrew Clements! “Clements is a genius.” —The New York Times “We have never read an Andrew Clements book that we haven’t loved.” —The Washington Post
After having her classmates walk away from her during a soccer game at recess because she hogs the ball, is bossy, and cares only about winning, Sally gets some good advice from her teacher and her mother. Includes note to parents.
Quijana is a girl in pieces. One-half Guatemalan, one-half American: When Quijana's Guatemalan cousins move to town, her dad seems ashamed that she doesn't know more about her family's heritage. One-half crush, one-half buddy: When Quijana meets Zuri and Jayden, she knows she's found true friends. But she can't help the growing feelings she has for Jayden. One-half kid, one-half grown-up: Quijana spends her nights Skyping with her ailing grandma and trying to figure out what's going on with her increasingly hard-to-reach brother. In the course of this immersive and beautifully written novel, Quijana must figure out which parts of herself are most important, and which pieces come together to make her whole. This lyrical debut from Rebecca Balcárcel is a heartfelt poetic portrayal of a girl growing up, fitting in, and learning what it means to belong.
In most ways, Poe is like the other kids in his school. He thinks about girls and tries to avoid too much contact with teachers. He has a loving father who helps him with his homework. But Poe has a secret, and almost every day some small act threatens to expose him. He doesn't have a phone number to give to friends. He doesn't have an address. Poe and his father are living in a tent on city land. When the city clears the land to build housing, Poe worries that they might not be able to find another site near his school. Will Poe have to expose his secret to get help for himself and his father? This short novel is a high-interest, low-reading level book for middle-grade readers who are building reading skills, want a quick read or say they don’t like to read!