Guiding Comprehension

If you are teaching the selection in
two days, discuss the story so far,
including any generalizations
students have made, and review the
vocabulary.

Cause and Effect
• Inferential

Reread p. 70, paragraph two.
The author writes that people
stopped coming for gas, they
stopped coming to play chess,
and they stopped coming to
look at the rocks. These are
all effects. What was the
cause of all this?

They were looking for jobs.

then… use the skill and strategy instruction on
p. 71.

If… children have difficulty identifying the cause,

Cause and Effect

Fact and Opinion • Critical

Text to Self Think about your relationship with a parent or another important adult in your life. Write one fact about him or her and one opinion.

Responses will vary. Check that students understand the difference between fact and opinion.

Whole Group Discuss the Question of the Day.

Rocks in His Head. See pp. 60f–60g for the small group lesson plan.

Reading

Group Time
Differentiated Instruction

Use pp. 85e–85h and
85k–85m.

Whole Group Discuss the Reader Response questions on p. 75. Then use p. 85a.

Language Arts

Grouping Options

SKILLS
STRATEGIES IN CONTEXT

Cause/Effect

TEACH

Remind students that when we are looking for the causes of an event, we ask ourselves why it happened. When we are looking for the effects of an event, we ask ourselves what happened. Sometimes an effect may have more than one cause, and sometimes a cause may have more than one effect.
Read the first few paragraphs
of p. 70 aloud. Model finding
the cause of the events.

MODEL As I read p. 70, I see that people stopped coming for gas, people stopped coming to play chess, and people stopped coming to look at the rocks. I ask myself why. As I continue, I read that they were looking for work. That is the answer and the cause of the events.

PRACTICE AND ASSESS

Have students read p. 71 and find why there were some days that her father did not work. (It was raining.)
To assess students, use Practice Book 3.2, p. 26.

Practice Book 3.2 p. 26

with | without Answers

"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 aut hor 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
	Understand Idioms Explain to students that idiomatic expressions often contain more than one word, and sometimes several of the words are prepositions. Point out the example to start in on (p. 70), which means to begin, to start. Ask students to use the expression in a sentence. Earth Science There are three types of rock on Earth. The first are igneous rocks, which form from magma that has cooled and solidified deep inside Earth. Some igneous rocks stay deep in Earth, while others are visible on the surface. The second type of rock is sedimentary rock. These are rocks formed from deposits which have been cemented together. Sedimentary rocks often have layers which are found on land or in water. The final type of rock is metamorphic rock. These rocks were preexisting rocks which have been changed by some force, usually extreme heat and pressure, deep underground. Metamorphic rocks also often have layers.

"Rocks in His Head" by Carol Otis Hurst

"Rocks in His Head"
by Carol Otis Hurst