Scott Foresman Reading Street

GUIDED PRACTICE Have students discuss how they would use the strategy to answer the following question.

Name three foods that are native to Mexico.

INDEPENDENT PRACTICE After students answer the following test question, discuss the process they used to find information.

What is a bolillo?

Use the Strategy

Read the test question and locate a key word or phrase.
Scan the headings in the text, looking for matches to your key word or phrase.
When you find a match, read the information under that heading. Use the information to help you answer the test question.

USE HEADINGS Explain to
students that a heading lets a
reader know what kind of
information he or she can find in
the section that follows. When an
expository text has headings
such as those in "Foods of
Mexico," students can use the
headings to find information that
will help them answer questions
on standardized tests. Provide the
following strategy.

Strategies
for Nonfiction

Possible response: The food of Mexico is a mix of native foods and others that originated in Europe and Asia.

Fluency Draw students' attention to the first sentence in the last paragraph of the article ("Like seeds blown by the wind…"). Explain that the word like signals a comparison. In this case, the things being compared are seeds and people. Then have students reread the sentence with this comparison in mind. Finally, ask them to tell in their own words how seeds and people are alike.

CONNECT TEXT TO TEXT

Reading Across Texts

Have students recall the two different cultures from which Pablo's mother and father come. Then ask students what special item the family bakes in their bakery. Finally, ask how this special item combines Pablo's parents' cultures.

Writing Across Texts Help students get started by listing the following examples on the board: fish tacos, jambalaya, chili, macaroni and cheese, Mexican pizza. Alternatively, students might invent and describe their own food that is a mix of two cultures.

The Spanish planted wheat
because they preferred wheat
bread to the native corn tortillas.
They baked little rolls called
bolillos. Serving bolillos was a
status symbol among Europeans.
But Mexicans never gave up
their tortillas. Eventually the
settlers began to eat them, too.

Bolillos

Tamales

Spanish ships called
galleons sailed across the
Pacific Ocean from Spanish
colonies in Asia. They brought
many foods and spices with
them. Rice from Asia together
with Mexico’s native beans
(frijoles) and tortillas became
the staple food of Mexico.
African slaves who were
brought to New Spain also
added their ways of cooking.

The Spanish who came to
the New World brought their
traditions with them. Over the
centuries Spain had had many
influences. From the Greeks,
who colonized Spain in the
fifth century B.C., the Spanish
learned to grow olives, grapes,
and chickpeas. From the Moors,
who ruled their country for eight
hundred years, they learned
to plant spinach, eggplants,
artichokes, watermelons,
sugarcane, and lime, lemon,
and orange trees.

Like seeds blown by the
wind, people came to Mexico
from distant lands, and they
settled and flowered. The foods
they brought with them blended
with native cooking. The result
is a Mexican cuisine that has
traces of distant lands.

Today it isn’t necessary to
choose between a tamale or
a bolillo. Street-corner food
vendors sell a breakfast snack
that blends two cultures: a
sliced bolillo with a hot tamale
inside. This is called a torta de
tamale, a tamale sandwich.

Writing Across Texts
Explain about a food you
know that is a blend of two
cultures.

People came from distant
lands to settle in Mexico.
They blended their foods
with the foods of the Mexican
people. How did Pablo’s
family do something similar?

Reading Across Texts

Rice

Beans (frijoles)

Summarize

Summarize what you learned.



	Close
	Test Practice Students may have difficulty scanning texts written in English. Encourage them instead to reread the text carefully and with a specific focus in mind. For example, as students work on the Independent Practice question, encourage them to look for the first sentence in which the word bolillo appears. Then, have them examine that sentence and surrounding ones to locate a definition for the word.