Celebrate Nonfiction

Exploring the Joy of Nonfiction Reading and Writing

Book of the Week: Frog or Toad? How Do You Know?

Educators
often ask me which of my books would work best in their classroom. So this
year, I’ve decided to feature a book each week and highlight related teaching
materials and strategies.

Last
week, I discussed A Place for Frogs.
If you pair it with Frog or Toad? How Do
You Know?, you can create a
great lesson that looks at text structures and how decisions about text
structure impact the research process.

After
reading the books to your students, ask them to discuss this following questions:

What is the primary
text structure of each book?

Do you think Melissa
Stewart used the same body of research to write both books? What is your
evidence?

Do you think her
information came from the same sources or different ones? What is your
rationale?

The
primary text structure of A Place for
Frogs could be described as either Cause & Effect or Problem-Solution.
But Frog or Toad? How Do You Know? has a strong Compare ? Contrast text
structure.

Hopefully,
students will realize that even though both books are about butterflies, the
content of each title is quite different.
For Frog or Toad?, My main
sources included books and personal observations in the natural world. For A Place for Frogs, I relied heavily on
scientific journal articles that I found using a database and interviews with
scientists.

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