This thirty-one page teachers resource for teching Carl Hiaasen's 2003 Newbery Honor Book two components.
First is THINK, WRITE, CREATE, eighteen pages of chapter-by-chapter and whole-book open-ended activities based on the HIGHER-LEVEL THINKING SKILLS of Bloom's Taxanomy. Questions and activities range in difficulty from the most basic to challenges for gifted students. The items are designed to spark divergent and speculative thinking, build vocabulary, and encourage student interaction with the story and its characters. Some require research and/or data collection. Others travel across the curriculum to bring math, social studies, science, music, art, etc. into play. Occasionally, an activity is included strictly for fun.
The second component is a set of ten GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS based on specific novel events or characters. Some highlight elements of literature while others require the writer to apply personal experiences to the story and its characters. At times, the graphic organizers involve data collection, research, or imaginative role-playing.
Answer keys are included for those activities that require a specific answer.
Download the free sample pages for a closer look.
NOTE: If you have bought HOOT: A NOVEL TEACHING PACK, you already own the material in this file. Please do not unintentionally duplicate your purchase.

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Immediately after graduating from Lenoir Rhyne College in 1965 with a degree in high school business education, I touched ground and taxied into a self-contained elementary classroom filled to the brim with 38 eighth graders. Not the place I had planned to spend the next thirty years, but unwittingly, I landed where I belonged! Most of my thirty years in education were spent living happily in the delightful, chaotic, but always interesting world of sixth, seventh, and eight graders. For three of those years I served as a facilitator for gifted education in twelve elementary schools, where I worked with fourth, fifth, and sixth graders and dozens of teachers. During the last phase of my career, I traveled to schools throughout western North Carolina and presented workshops based on a program for teaching composition skills that I authored and used in my classroom. In 1997, after retiring from the classroom, I founded Taking Grades Publishing Company and began a second career writing teaching materials for middle grade language arts teachers. The company has enjoyed steady growth and can now claim customers in all fifty states, several Canadian provinces, and even Taiwan! Joining the TeachersPayTeachers team in November 2008 was the beginning of my third career in education. Once a teacher. Always a teacher!
