One Crazy Summer, by Rita Williams-Garcia: A PDF & EASEL Novel Study

This packet includes a ready-to-use, custom made, CCSS aligned, PDF novel study for students reading the award-winning novel, One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia! It can also be downloaded as a TpT Digital product. Included in the packet is a 24-page student booklet (printable or used digitally) as well as a vocabulary bookmark, plus an answer key. It is designed to reinforce essential reading and writing skills for students in grades 5-8. Skills addressed support CCSS and include visualizing, determining author’s purpose, inferring, explaining, comprehension, questioning, comparing/contrasting, recognizing point-of-view, vocabulary, and using context clues.

The student booklet divides the text into seven reading assignments with questions and tasks to go with each one. In addition there is a culminating activity at the end of the booklet. It is designed for independent work so that students may be working on this in class while the teacher is meeting with another group. Just copy and give three staples on the left side to create individual student booklets.

In my classroom, students were responsible for completing one reading assignment with the accompanying questions each week. They would be given three, 40 minute periods per week to complete one assignment. They would then meet once a week with me (or an aide or a parent), along with the other students reading the same book to discuss the book and review the assignments. Instead of using this as class work, the packet could also be used as homework.

NOTE: If you are interested in a novel study for the other books in this One Crazy Summer trilogy, take a look at my Novel Study for P.S. Be Eleven, and Gone Crazy in Alabama. Or, you can purchase all three at a discount in One Crazy Bundle.

Clip Art Credits:

Illumismart@ Teachers Pay Teachers, L.L. Tisdel; www.llltisdel.com.

dreamstime.com

One Crazy Summer in a nutshell:

AWARD WINNING BOOK: 2011 Newbery Honor Book, Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction, 2010 National Book Award Finalist, and Coretta Scott King Award.

It is 1968 and 11 year old Delphine and her two younger sisters are flown to California to visit a mother they hardly know. They find life with her to be quite different from the life they knew in Brooklyn. They feel shunned by their mother and are sent to a Black Panther camp where they get an unexpected education. This book provides wonderful character portraits along with an insight into the 1960’s in Oakland. Delightfully rich and descriptive writing!

Appropriate for students in grades 5-8. Reading level approximately 5th grade.