Prereading Strategies

	Identify and make generalizations.
	Activate and use prior knowledge to make generalizations.

GENRE STUDY

Biography

Rocks in His Head is a biography. It tells the story of a real person written by someone else.

PREVIEW AND PREDICT

Have students preview the selection
title and illustrations and discuss what
they think this selection will be about. Encourage students to use lesson vocabulary as they talk about what they expect to learn.

Activate Prior Knowledge Have students think about what they know about biography as a genre and make
some notes. Students will monitor their comprehension in the Strategy Response Log activity on p. 69.

SET PURPOSE

Read the first page of the selection aloud to students. Have them consider their preview discussion and tell what they hope to find out as they read.

Remind students to think about what they already know and make generalizations as they read.

STRATEGY RECALL

Students have now used these before-reading strategies:

preview the selection to be aware of its genre, features, and possible content;
activate prior knowledge about that content and what to expect of that genre;
make predictions;
set a purpose for reading.

Remind students to be aware of and flexibly use the during-reading strategies they have learned:

link prior knowledge to new information;
summarize text they have read so far;
ask clarifying questions;
answer questions they or others pose;
check their predictions and either refine them or make new predictions;
recognize the text structure the author is using, and use that knowledge to make predictions and increase comprehension;
visualize what the author is describing;
monitor their comprehension and use fix-up strategies.

After reading, students will use these strategies:

summarize or retell the text;
answer questions they or others pose;
reflect to make new information become part of their prior knowledge.

AudioText

"Rocks in His Head"
by Carol Otis Hurst

Student Edition
Unit 4, pp. 64–74

A biography is the story of a real person's life, written by another person. Why might the author have decided to write a biography of this person?

Mr. Hurst, my father, was a collector. He didn't collect stamps or buttons. He collected rocks—all kinds of rocks. His interest in rocks began when he was a boy. By the time he was an adult, he had rocks of many colors and sizes. He knew the name of every rock and where each came from.
He used to tell people he had rocks in his head. Of course, this made them laugh. When people say that you have rocks in your head, they usually mean that you are not very smart. Mr. Hurst meant that he liked rocks a lot and knew a lot about them.
Rocks were just Mr. Hurst's hobby. For work he ran a gas station. He filled up gas tanks and repaired cars, using spare parts he kept in the station. He kept his rock collection at the station too. Every now and then, a customer would ask Mr. Hurst about the collection.
Business was good until the Great Depression. That was a time when many people lost their jobs. They did not have money to buy gas or fix cars. Mr. Hurst had to close his gas station.
He carefully packed his rocks and moved them to his home, where he put them in his attic. He went up there to look at them every day. Like others, Mr. Hurst had trouble finding work. There were very few jobs and very many people looking for work.
Sometimes he would spend the whole day at the science museum. He really liked the rock room. He met Mrs. Johnson, the head of the museum, there. When they talked, she found out that Mr. Hurst knew more about rocks than anyone else around. She asked the museum's board to hire him.
The board said that Mr. Hurst could not be hired as a rock scientist, or mineralogist, because he had not gone to college. And so Mrs. Johnson hired him as a night janitor. His chores included sweeping, cleaning, and dusting the rocks.
Then one day, Mrs. Johnson came into the museum and saw Mr. Hurst relabeling a rock. He told her it had been labeled incorrectly. Mrs. Johnson went to the board once again. This time she got them to agree to hire Mr. Hurst as the head of rock science.
She said that he was the best person for the job because he had rocks in his head.



	Close
	Build Background Discuss early twentieth-century America with small groups of students. Topics relevant to the selection include the west-ward expansion of the country, the opening of Route 66, the introduction and mass production of the automobile, the Dust Bowl, and the Great Depression. Consider having students read the selection summary in English or in students' home languages. See the Multilingual Summaries in the ELL Teaching Guide, pp. 124–126.

"Rocks in His Head" by Carol Otis Hurst

"Rocks in His Head"
by Carol Otis Hurst