Hi everyone,
My thanks to you who visited Amazon yesterday to look over my book with TIM RASINSKI and LAURA ROBB — Promote Reading Gains with Differentiated Instruction. If you reviewed the book or plan to, thank you!! Your attention makes a huge difference!
One of the unique features of the readings, both poems and 500-word texts, is that in every case I wrote a set of three: one at grade level, one above it, and one below it. They all offer subjects and writing of interest but they differ in subtle ways to make them suitable for readers no matter where they are on their journey toward proficiency. I’ll give you three examples for third graders.
Visualizing
3rd Grade, At Level
Hummingbird
Darts past
windowsill.
Whir of hurry.
Seldom still.
Color flash.
Blurred zoom.
Feathered streak.
Bright bloom.
Quick pause.
Stolen sip.
Wing hum.
Gone, zip.
Here, there.
Hardly heard.
Dipping, diving.
Hummingbird.
Visualizing
3rd Grade, Above Level
Octopus
Octopus, octopus,
escape-artist octopus,
ink-squirting octopus,
magician of the sea.
Octopus, octopus,
color-changing octopus,
shape-changing octopus,
jetting through the sea.
Octopus, octopus,
coral-creeping octopus,
squeeze-in-cracks octopus,
hide and seek at sea.
Octopus, octopus,
eight-limbed octopus,
blue-blooded octopus,
slyest in the sea.
Octopus, octopus,
nine-hearted octopus,
three-brained octopus,
genius of the sea.
Visualizing
3rd Grade, Below Level
Blue Whale
Down
where
there is no light
and the water is cold,
the great
blue
whale
minds its own business.
It
sings,
and its voice rumbles
in the gloom, the
loudest
noise
of any living thing.
Nothing
else –
not an elephant
or a dinosaur –
has ever
been
bigger,
on land or air or sea.
For
food,
it eats tiny things like shrimp.
Its
babies
are bigger than a car.
Comes
up
for air and goes
back
down.
All the Blue Whale wants is
to
mind
its own business.
Children's Author David L. Harrison's Blog 