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Vocabulary • Prefixes and Suffixes
Cause and Effect • Critical
Cause and Effect
Onomatopoeia • Inferential
STRATEGIES IN CONTEXT
MODEL The question asks me to find a cause. The effect is given. I will write "The ants get caught in a whirling storm of shredded food and stinging rain" in the graphic organizer. I must read and use what I already know to identify the cause. I know that the ants fell into the sink. I know that in some sinks there is a garbage disposal that spins and chops up food. Someone turned on the garbage disposal. I will write that in the "cause" part of the graphic organizer. When the disposal was turned on, the ants went spinning in the sink.
Student Edition
Unit 6, pp. 358–375
An animal fantasy is a story with animal characters that behave like humans. What is unusual about these two ants?
The scout came back to the ant hole carrying a huge, white crystal. The queen ant tasted the sugar. It was sweet and delicious. The discovery of the crystal made her joyful. The scout said that to please her, he would take other ants with him to get more.
The ants prepared for the long journey, and the scout led them through a forest of grass. Then they came to a large mountain of bricks. The line of ants climbed up the wall to a large, rectangular opening and entered a strange place. They crossed a huge shiny land and came to the curved wall of a sugar bowl. Each ant climbed in, picked up a crystal, and headed back out. They would give their crystals to the queen. Their goal was to make her happy. When she was happy, the entire kingdom was happy. Two ants decided to stay behind. They liked the land of the crystals. They ate and ate the sweet-tasting stuff until they could eat no more.
They fell asleep and so were unaware that a huge scoop was digging into the bowl. They ended up on the scoop with some crystals and fell into an ocean of hot, brown water. The scoop stirred and stirred. Finally it stopped, and the ocean was lifted up. Some of the brown water poured into a huge mouth. They had to get out of the water! They climbed the walls of the cup and ran to hide in a slice of bread.
Oh, no! The bread was lifted and dropped into a slot. They saw a red glow, and the slot became very hot. Then they were popped up and into the air. They landed near a fast-running stream of water. They went over to get a drink and cool their feet. But they fell in, and the stream swirled them into a dark hole. Half-eaten food was everywhere. Then a grinding noise began, and the food began to spin and break up. The food bits disappeared as water washed the bits down into pipes below. Finally the spinning stopped.
Tired and sore, the two ants climbed the walls and once again saw light. They saw something else too. A long line of ants was heading toward the sugar bowl. The two ants went to the back of the line and pretended to have been there all along. Each grabbed a crystal and marched with the others back to the ant nest.
The two bad ants were happy to be safe at home again. They had had enough adventure!
(Updated) Two Bad Ants by Chris Van Allsburg. Copyright © 1988 by Chris Van Allsburg. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Pearson Education.
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 Extend Language Work with students to identify the words with prefixes and/or suffixes. Students should practice analyzing the word parts and determining the meanings of the words.
Life Cycles
In the story, the two bad ants' lives were in danger.
In real life, a queen ant lays eggs. The egg hatches. Out comes a worm-like larva with no eyes. The larva grows and sheds it skin. It spins a cocoon. An adult ant comes out of the cocoon. This process takes about two months. Some queen ants can live for 15 years. Worker ants can live for 7 years. |
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