MODEL CHARACTERIZATION As you read “Manuelo the Playing Mantis,” use

After reading “Manuelo the Playing Mantis,” use the following questions to
assess listening comprehension.

Start a web to build concepts and vocabulary related to this week’s lesson and
the unit theme.

   One warm summer evening in Cloverdale Meadow, a lonely praying mantis
named Manuelo stood still as a stick listening to beautiful music coming over
the hill. Manuelo had attended these outdoor concerts many times before, and
he knew the shapes and sounds of all the different instruments. His favorite
sounds were those of the flute, the trumpet, the harp, and the cello.

   Manuelo wished that he, too, could be a musician.

   When the concert was over, he climbed down from his perch in the thicket
and went home to the pond. Hopefully, Manuelo started rubbing his legs against
his wings, the way crickets and grasshoppers and katydids do whenever they
sing. But as hard as he rubbed, he heard only silence—and the clicking of a
cricket coming nearer and nearer.

   "Clickety click!" it chirped. "A mantis can't make music the way I can!" And
then, just as quickly as it had appeared, it disappeared behind the tall grass.

   "There must be something I can do!" Manuelo sighed to himself.

   Close by, he spied a trumpet vine clinging to a wall. "Just the thing!" he cried.
"I'll play a horn!"

   After snipping off a trumpet flower he held it up the way any fine trumpet
player does, and began to blow. He blew and blew and blew until he grew
blue in the face. Once again, not a single sound could he make!

   Poor Manuelo sat there feeling very sad. He loved music so much, and yet he could not make any.

   Manuelo was discouraged and almost ready to give up trying when he heard
something whirring high above his head. "Take heart, my good fellow," said a
thin, wispy voice. "I know how you feel. I can't make music either."

   Turning his head completely around, Manuelo looked up and saw a spindly
spider suspended by a thread from a branch above. "My name is Debby
Webster, and I've been watching you all evening," she said as she slid down
lower and lower until she hung directly in front of Manuelo's face. "If you will do
as I tell you, maybe together we can make a cello. First you must fetch me an
empty walnut shell and a stick with a curlicue on the end."

   Without asking any questions, Manuelo went about searching everywhere. In
hardly any time at all, he found half a walnut shell and a stick with a curlicue on
one end. Tucking them both under his arms, he rushed back to his spindly
spider friend.

   "Now, my good mantis," said Debby, "if you will fix the stick tightly to the shell I will spin some strong strings for you."

by Don Freeman