A Guide For Using Maniac Magee In The Classroom

Presents lesson plans, curriculum connections, activities, vocabulary help, a related-reading list, and other materials for teaching "Maniac Magee" by Jerry Spinelli.

Teaching literature unit based on the popular children's story, Maniac Magee.

Explore the many obstacles that Maniac Magee encounters in this eye-opening book. Students will learn to analyze prejudices and other challenges that Magee faces by completing fun, challenging activities and lessons provided in this digital instructional guide for literature. This e-book guide is the perfect tool for teachers to aid students in analyzing and comprehending this story. Appealing and challenging cross-curricular lessons and activities incorporate research-based literacy skills to help students become thorough readers. These lessons and activities work in conjunction with the text to teach students how to analyze and comprehend story elements in multiple ways, practice close reading and text-based vocabulary, determine meaning through text-dependent questions, and much more.

Suggests activities to be used in the classroom to accompany the reading of Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli.

He wasn't born with the name Maniac Magee. He came into this world named Jeffrey Lionel Magee, but when his parents died and his life changed, so did his name. And Maniac Magee became a legend. Even today kids talk about how fast he could run; about how he hit an inside-the-park "frog" homer; how no knot, no matter how snarled, would stay that way once he began to untie it. But the thing Maniac Magee is best known for is what he did for the kids from the East Side and those from the West Side.

These post-reading activities for Maniac Magee allow students to share their understanding of the characters, plots, and settings of the book. They have opportunities to write, draw, and perform based on what they've learned.

Struggling readers frequently lack basic reading skills and are not equipped with the prior knowledge and reading strategies to thoroughly engage in the classroom literature experience. Give your students the background and support they need to understand and enjoy literature. With these reading guides, your students will practice reading comprehension skills, sharpen their vocabulary, and learn to identify literary elements. The eBooks range in reading level from 4 to 10. Reproducible. Contents Include: Teacher and student support materials, reproducible student activity sheets, an end-of-book test, and an answer key. Each reading guide divides the novel into six manageable units. Prepares all students for reading success through activating prior knowledge. Focuses reading with guiding "Questions to Think About". Build vocabulary with pre-reading and during-reading activities.

In this Caldecott Medal–winning picture book, the true story of Wilson Bentley and his singular fascination with snowflakes is rendered in rich prose and gorgeous artwork, perfect for the holidays, snow days, and everyday. Wilson Bentley was always fascinated by snow. In childhood and adulthood, he saw each tiny crystal of a snowflake as a little miracle and wanted to understand them. His parents supported his curiosity and saved until they could give him his own camera and microscope. At the time, his enthusiasm was misunderstood. But with patience and determination, Wilson catalogued hundreds of snowflake photographs, gave slideshows of his findings and, when he was 66, published a book of his photos. His work became the basis for all we know about beautiful, unique snowflakes today. This biographical tribute to a very special farmer is the perfect holiday gift or snow day read.

Inspire your students with this brave story about racism and homelessness. The helpful journal topics offer extended writing activities and discussion prompts. Students come up with possible story ideas that could relate to the title, "maniac". Illustrate the scene between McNab and Maniac. Match quotes to the characters who said them. Students confront the idea of discrimination by identifying some of the ways people discriminate against other people. Find proof from the story to support the different qualities inhabited by Maniac and Grayson. Give meaning to expressions from the story. Identify each expression as a simile or metaphor. Identify a major and minor problem that Maniac faces in the story and explain each in a paragraph. Aligned to your State Standards, additional crossword, word search, comprehension quiz and answer key are also included. About the Novel: Maniac Magee is a Newbery Medal winning-story about a young homeless boy running through town and the different people he meets along the way. Orphaned at the age of three, Jeffrey Magee runs away from his Aunt and Uncle eight years later. He finds himself in Two Mills, Pennsylvania, where he realizes the town is split in half—the East End and the West End. Running his way through the town, Magee learns of the hatred and racism that separates the two sides. Along the way, he meets a wide range of interesting characters, and even develops a legend for himself, earning him the nickname "Maniac". He endures hardships while moving from place to place, eventually finding a home in a buffalo pen at the zoo.