Mentor Text: Fox by Margaret Wild & Ron Brooks {FREEBIE}

Collaboration Cuties

I am excited to share this Mentor Text with!  Our district purchased a small set of books for each teacher to use as a Mentor Text at the beginning of the year, and to be honest I never really sat down and looked at them until this winter break...oops!  One of the books we were given was Fox by Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks, this book is AHHH-MAZE-ING!        

The story takes place in the Australian scrub (bush/forest) and is a tale about friendship, loyalty, betrayal, and much much more!  There are three main characters a dog, magpie, and fox.  As in most tales the fox is sneaky and is able to disrupt the dog and magpie's friendship.  The story starts out with the dog saving the magpie from a fire, but never tells you how the fire was started, which is the beginning of their friendship.  (Having students write a prologue would be a great activity.)

 Images from amazon.com

I think the students will enjoy the pictures and text of this book because they are different from most books.  The text is written in handwriting and all over the pages.  The vocabulary and descriptive words are incredible and a wonderful teaching tool.

As I read this book I liked that it wasn't your normal heart warming story, there is jealousy, trouble, and betrayal within friendships which many of the upper elementary students are experiencing more and more.  This is a great book about peer pressure, loyalty, friendship, and staying true to yourself.  The author uses characteristics of the animals in their natural habitat in these characters as well.  For example they play on a fox's slyness, dog's loyalty, and the magpie's ability to quickly sense danger.

Once I read the book I knew I had to create a language arts pack to use with my students.  I have created a 9-10 lesson plan unit that teaches/reviews the main idea (informational text included), character traits, theme, plot, summarizing, text-to-self & text-to-world connections, context clues, adjectives, verbs, mentor sentences, and text-dependent questions.  I can't wait to use this text in the next week with my students.

I am sure many of you have never heard or seen this book before, although I am also sure there are some who have, so I am going to make my Fox Language Arts Pack a FREEBIE for today and tomorrow!(I was so excited when I finished I made is a freebie yesterday too)!  I just ask that you leave feedback and hope you purchase the book to use in your own classroom.