Where is fritz in two bad ants

Look carefully at the garbage disposal page. He is disguised as one of the "chunks" swirling around. I usually do a whole unit on Van Allsburg. A fun activity with The Z was Zapped is each of the kids has to make thier own version and hide Fritz somewhere in thier books. Post as a guest or become a member today. New members welcome! Join the conversation! Post now as a guest or become a member today. Welcome Teachers! The real Fritz is hiding on a wine label on a kitchen counter.

Though the dog is little more than an afterthought of each story for the author, Fritz has become a sensation for young readers. Van Allsburg says he gets hundreds of letters asking him how Fritz ended up so tiny in the garbage disposal Two Bad Ants or turned into a teapot Probuditi! These are valid questions. In The Garden , Gasazi tells the boy that he has changed Fritz into a duck as punishment. But by the end of the book, Fritz the dog is back, and the reader is left wondering whether the magician really did transform Fritz, or if it was all a cruel joke on the boy.

Gasazi would have first simply propelled Fritz out of his garden to get rid of him, not bothering to change his shape. But Fritz, we know, is a tricky terrier. Gasazi would have gotten more frustrated and turned to greater measures of retaliation. Though the timing of when Gasazi turns Fritz into his various forms dog in other worlds first, dog as various dog-shaped objects second, dog as duck last does not align with the order in which Van Allsburg published his books, the theory can still hold.

The sleeping ants were unaware of changes taking place in their new found home. A giant silver scoop hovered above them, then plunged deep into the crystals. It shoveled up both ants and crystals and carried them high into the air. The ants were wide awake when the scoop turned, dropping them from a frightening height.

They tumbled through space in a shower of crystals and fell into a boiling brown lake. Think aloud for your students as you make a prediction. You might say, "I think the ants might have fallen into a cup of coffee when they got scooped out of the sugar bowl. This is why: I read in the text that a silver scoop shoveled them up. I think that's a spoon. Then I read that the ants fell into a boiling brown lake.

I think that must be coffee. Tell them you will be stopping them and asking them to make a prediction to a partner. Do this. As they talk to each other, remind them to use both the pictures and the words to help them. Bring the class back together and ask one or two children to share their predictions with the class. Tell the students as you send them off to read independently that whenever they are reading, their job is to stop every so often and make a prediction about what is going to happen next, using both pictures and text.

Reading Time: As your students read, confer with them individually about the process of making predictions, like you did using Two Bad Ants. Stop the class midway through reading time and ask them to tell a partner what they predict will happen next. Share: Share the work of a student or partnership that made predictions in their books based on information given by the pictures and the text.

Adapting This Lesson for Less Experienced Readers: If your students are not yet reading and are still working with emergent storytelling in familiar picture books, simply tell them that readers make predictions about what will happen next using the pictures and what they know about the story. You may want to spend several more read-aloud sessions working on predictions as a class instead of immediately transferring this work into children's independent reading.

Expanding This Lesson: Expand on the predicting work that can be done within reading partnerships. Focus on helping students to stop and take turns telling each other the predictions they are making within their own books.

Teach them to ask each other questions about what they are reading. Try reading the story to your students without showing them the pictures at all. Stop and have them predict where the ants are simply by listening to the words. Remind them how writers like Van Allsburg put a lot of detail into their descriptions.

Imagine you are ant-sized. Write about it. Have you ever been "bad" like the ants? What happened? Write the continuing adventures of the two bad ants. Leave a comment. Filed under Uncategorized. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email.