Where the Sidewalk Ends: Sick By: Shel Silverstein

Book Title: Where the Sidewalk Ends: Sick

Author: Shel Silverstein

Illustrator: Shel Silverstein

Genre: Poetry

Summary: A child is complaining of multiple illnesses and reasons why they cannot go to school, until they realize that it's Saturday, they suddenly feel miraculously healed. 

ELA Content Standard 1: Grade 2, Craft and Structure #4- Describe how words and phrases (e.g., regular beats, alliteration, rhymes, repeated lines) supply rhythm and meaning in a story, poem, or song.

How it Connects: Students can hear the rhythm and rhyme of the poem and the flow of the story within that poem make sense with the words that connect each line

ELA Content Standard 2: Grade 3, Craft and Structure #5- Refer to parts of stories, dramas, and poems when writing or speaking about a text, using terms such as chapter, scene, and stanza; describe how each successive part builds on earlier sections.

How it Connects: Students can recognize the layout of the stanzas in the poem and follow the patterns of how every other line (in this case) ends in a rhyme scheme.

3 Tiers of  Vocab: 1) school, blue 2) chicken, weak 3) Instamatic

How Children Use Book: Individually

Meets Needs: Gifted students can use this poem to create rhyme stanzas that mimic the style of this particular author