Reading Strategies

Making Predictions

Before reading the book The Secret Shortcut, look at the illustration on the cover and discuss:

• What is a shortcut?  Why would you need one?
• Have students make predictions about the place that the characters might be trying to go using the secret shortcut.
• Point out that the word “Secret” in the title is italicized.  Discuss with students why the author might have made that word look different from the rest of the words in the title.

Questioning: What do you wonder?
Will Wendell & Floyd get to school on time?  Will they make it out of the jungle alive?  Make a list of what students are wondering about the story prior to reading.  After reading the story, go back to the list and discuss these wonderings.

Visualizing

The book The Secret Shortcut is a wonderful story to work on visualizing.  Mark Teague uses very entertaining descriptive language in this story.  Visualizing enables students to construct meaning by creating pictures in their minds as they hear the story. 

Visualizing Activity:
Fold a piece of paper into 6 sections

Read the story without showing students the illustrations.  Stop 6 different times and have students draw pictures of what they’re visualizing.  All the students’ pictures may not show the same scene- that’s okay.  If you stop for the first time on the page where Floyd arrives at Wendell’s house early in the morning, for example, some students may draw that scene, some may draw the space aliens, and some may draw the pirates on the loose.  Remember not to show them the pictures.  After you finish the story, share and discuss students’ drawings/visualizations.

Vocabulary Building

The story The Secret Shortcut has rich vocabulary that may need to be discussed and clarified for students.  Some of the vocabulary in the story that students may not be familiar with:

• Plague- any cause of trouble or annoyance: uninvited guests are a plague; a sudden destructive influx or injurious outbreak: a plague of locusts, a plague of accidents

• Culvert- a drain or channel crossing under a road or sidewalk

• Thicket- a thick or dense growth of shrubs, bushes, or small trees

• Boulders- a large, mounded mass of rock lying on the surface of the ground or embedded in the soil

• Bank- the slope immediately bordering a stream

• Echo- a repetition of sound produced by the reflection of sound waves from a wall, mountain, or other obstructing surface

• Meandered- taking a winding or indirect course

• Quicksand- a bed of soft or loose sand saturated with water and having considerable depth, yielding under weight and therefore tending to suck down any object resting on its surface

• Gorge- a narrow cleft with steep, rocky walls, often a stream runs through

• Clearing- a tract of land, as in a forest, that contains no bushes or trees

Making Connections

Text-to-self connections are made when the reader is reminded of a similar experience they’ve had in their own lives.  This helps them better understand the characters’ motives, thoughts, and feelings.
Some text-to-self connections that can be made during The Secret Shortcut might be about being late, making excuses, friendship, or being lost.  Discuss with students how they solved the problem in their own lives. 

Text-to-text connections are made when the reader is reminded of another book, magazine, poem, or even song- anything that is written.  

Other stories and poems for making connections:

*The Troll Bridge Troll  by Patricia Rae Wolff - A troll tries to prevent Trigg from crossing the bridge on the way to school, only to be outwitted by the boy’s riddles

*My Big Lie by Bill Cosby - Little Bill gets in big trouble when he tells a fib to explain why he has come home late for dinner

*David Gets in Trouble by David Shannon - When David gets in trouble, he has excuses right up until bedtime, when he realizes he really is sorry

*True Story (from Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein) 

*Lyin’ Larry (from Falling Up by Shel Silverstein)

*Today Is Very Boring (from The New Kid on the Block by Jack Prelutsky)

*Kevin the King of the Jungle (from Something Big Has Been Here by Jack Prelutsky)

*A Remarkable Adventure (from Something Big Has Been Here by Jack Prelutsky)

Sequence of Events

When students are asked to retell a story, the ability to determine which events are important and to retell them in the sequence that they happened is important.  Discuss the sequence of events in the story (you may want to list these on a chart).  Have students make a map of Wendell & Floyd’s secret shortcut to school.  Brainstorm the important details that have to be included, assign specific sections of the map to individual students.

Strategies That Work by Stephanie Harvey