This is the farm. Peaceful. Full of chickens, horse, sheep, and intrigue. Intrigue? Yes -- intrigue. Someone has pilfered a peck of perfectly picked purple peppers. Ducktective Web and his partner Bill are hot on the trail of the pepper pincher, but this could be a hard case to quack.
Little Boy Blue has an airtight alibi and Jack Horner won’t talk. Meanwhile, vegetables are vanishing all over the farm. Through some fast-paced wordplay and quick ducktective work,
Web is able to track down the culprit, and seize That Dirty Rat before all of the salad-makings
are snatched.

Hyperion Books for Children

About the Illustrator - Richard Egielski

Reading Strategies ~ Strategies That Work by Stephanie Harvey

Preview Story
Look at the cover and read the inside of the jacket to familiarize students with the story.  You may also want to take a picture walk through the book, asking students what they notice in the pictures that might be important in the story- notice characters, setting, characters’ activities, etc.  With older students you may want to have them complete this Pre-reading Organizer. 

Preview Questions

1. What is a detective?
2. What does a detective do to solve a case?

After Reading Questions-

1. What makes this story so funny?
2. What characters in this story were you already familiar with?  Where do you know them from?

Puns and Double Meaning Words
The Web Files is full of funny puns and double meaning words.  See how many your students can find, list them, and see if they can figure out the meaning.  Here are just a few examples from the story to get you started:

Nursery Rhyme/Fairy Tale Activity

In groups, have students choose 2 nursery rhymes or fairy tales to read and then combine into a new group story, as the author of The Web Files does.  List characters and events in the 2 stories in the table below for a pre-writing activity:

Reader’s Theater

The Web Files is written in the short, clipped style that is often seen in detective writing.  This makes it perfect for Reader’s Theater.  Students will hear the style as they perform. 

1. Take lines of dialogue from the story and assign them to specific characters- the narrator, Detective Web, the hen, Little Boy Blue, etc.  Students can dress up as their character or wear a sign that tells who they are.  Create the script.
2. Assign parts to students and give them a copy of the script.  Some parts will have the tricky tongue twister parts!  Have students practice reading their lines with a partner to develop fluency. 
3. Discuss reading volume for an audience, speed, speaking clearly so the audience can understand their words, and reading with expression appropriate for their role before performing.

Sequencing
For younger students in the primary grades you may want to focus on the beginning, middle, and end of the story using the Story Train. 

The Follow the Clues graphic organizer is great for helping students make and confirm predictions throughout the reading of the story.  Students use clues from the story to predict how characters will behave and how problems will be solved. 

For older students, have them create a Story Circle.  They can use this format to write about/draw a picture of the important events in the story. 

Summarizing
Have students work in cooperative groups to complete a Plot Diagram after reading The Web Files.  They must reach consensus on what the important events are and list these as the introduction, rising actions in the story, climax, falling actions in the story, and the conclusion.

You can then have students use their plot diagram as a basis for writing a summary of the story (intermediate) or retelling the story (primary).

Writing Strategies ~ 6+1 Traits of Writing by Ruth Culham

6:35 A.M.
The hen’s house.
We knocked on the door.  She answered. 

Margie Palatini’s detective-style story is a great example of sentence fluency - a collection of short, snappy sentences and longer ones packed full of alliteration, adjectives, and allusions to charming children’s rhymes!  It’s fast-paced, it’s witty, and it’s entertaining! 

Here are a few definitions that will help your students to better understand the story...

• suspect – a person suspected of a crime
• unlawful – illegal; against the law
• rash (“a rash of recent robberies”) – many instances in a short time
• snitch – tattletale
• convicted – found guilty
• pilfered, pinched, picked – all synonyms for  “steal”
• sneaky, wily, tricky – all synonyms for “sneaky” or “sly”

In addition to the vocabulary, it would be a good idea to review some children’s rhymes before you begin to read The Web Files.  In the story, you’ll see references to these characters:

• Little Miss Muffet
• Little Bo Peep
• Little Boy Blue
• The Three Little Kittens Who Lost their Mittens
• Peter Piper, and
• Little Jack Horner

* Teaching the Traits * 

Teaching Sentence Fluency:  “The Long and Short of It”
As we follow Ducktectives Web and Bill on their hunt for the vegetable thief, we notice a very interesting pattern in Ducktective Web’s sentence structure.  Some sentences are short.  Blunt.  To the point.  While others are longer, with more adjectives, and more detail.  Use this story as an example of the value of varying sentence structure.  When Ducktective Web’s sentences are short and choppy, we suddenly pay more attention.  We know he means business.  His longer sentences often include dialogue, and we know he’s gathering information to help catch the thief.  What we see is a change in the rhythm and tempo of the writing, and it causes us to read more carefully.  Your students will keep their audience on their toes if they can vary the lengths of the sentences in their own writing.

Do a little research on sentence length with The Web Files.  (This could even be a math graphing activity.)  Take a few pages of the story and tally the number of words in each sentence.  For younger students, you might even photocopy a page or two and allow them to underline/highlight each sentence with different color markers, and then count the number of words in each sentence.  The students will be able to see just how short the short sentences are, and how long the long ones are!  Then practice writing sentences that are different lengths!  Can you write a sentence with just two words?  How about one with 12 words?  Try adding adjectives and adverbs to lengthen your sentences, or removing them to shorten them. 

Teaching Word Choice:  Amazing Alliteration
“Alliteration” is the repetition of a sound at the beginning of two or more neighboring words.  Like “She sells sea shells…” and “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers…”.  Throughout The Web Files, Margie Palatini spices up her sentences with alliteration, and entertains her audience with phrases like “tasty tart tomatoes” and “lift a load of luscious leafy lettuce.”  There are no bland sentences here!

Students of any age can help to create sentences that use alliteration.  You could start by picking a letter, and then brainstorming words that begin with that letter.  You could also create a chart with columns for nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.  Then start brainstorming, even looking for words in the dictionary or thesaurus.  Once your chart is sufficiently complete, pull together the words that begin with the same sound, and create some crafty sentences!

For some inspiration, check out this website.  You’ll find a list of examples of alliteration here!

http://volweb.utk.edu/Schools/bedford/harrisms/1allitera.htm 

Teaching Conventions:  Quirky Quotation Marks and Exciting Ellipses
The Web Files is chock full of dialogue, as Ducktectives Web and Bill interview their witnesses and suspects.  You can use the dialogue as a real-world example of how to punctuate quotations.  You’ll see new paragraphs begin as new characters speak.  You’ll see longer quotations broken into pieces, like “Can it, Ratzo,” I said. “You’ve been in nothing but garbage for years.”  You can also discuss the placement of periods and commas within quotation marks.

There are also several ellipses (…) throughout the story…pauses in the dialogue that indicate some words have been left out.  These instances are a great way to demonstrate the use of the ellipsis. 

Here’s an idea to have your students write their own mystery, another parody of The Web Files:

http://writingfix.com/PictureBookPrompts/Web_Files_voice.htm

"Just the Facts, Ma'am."
Bringing in Joe Friday to solve an original mystery plot
 

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