Incorporating African folklore into the read aloud series with this tale from the Ashanti:

“Anansi the Spider” by Gerald McDermott

Book Synopsis

Gerald McDermott adapts this popular folktale, intertwining bold, rich colorful illustrations with traditional African design motifs and authentic Ashanti language rhythms. This traditional Ashanti tale features Anansi the Spider, one of the great folk heroes of the world. He is a wise, lovable, mischief maker who triumphs over larger foes. In this folk tale, Anansi embarks on a difficult quest. On his journey, when danger befalls him ~ threatened by Fish and Falcon~ Anansi is saved from terrible fates by his sons, each of whom uses their special gifts to help their father. A new predicament arises as Anansi determines which son he should reward. As the family falls into bickering, Anansi calls upon Nyame, the God of All Things, and with Nyame’s wisdom and help, solves his problem in a touching and resourceful fashion.

Reading Comprehension Skills:

This read aloud focuses on the following comprehension skills for language expression:

Making and Confirming Predictions: *Thinking readers make predictions and then check if what they thought was right. *

Retelling: Readers can retell the main events of a story, and recount problems and solutions, and the beginning, middle, and end of a tale.

Language Support Sentence Frames:

Leveled sentence frames are used throughout this read aloud to differentiate for different language levels. *Note that sentence frames are purposefully generalized, i.e. they aren’t specific to the story, which means they can be used in various contexts. When discussing different subjects in different content areas, students can use the language frames practiced in this read aloud.

Featured sentence frames:

Making Predictions:

• Beginning Level: I predict _______.
• Intermediate Level: I predict_____ because______.
• Advanced Level: In my opinion _____ because______.

Retelling

• In the beginning ________.
• First, __________. Next, ____________. Then, ______________.
• After that, ___________.
• Suddenly, _____________.
• Finally, ______________.
• In the end ____________.

YouTube Video: Learning English Guided Shared-Reading Read Aloud

An interactive read-aloud video to help refugee students learn English, by providing ample practice for structured language practice opportunities and to grow vocabulary repertoire.

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*~Overall enjoy an interactive read aloud designed to engage you in conversation through thoughtful predictions and retelling of the folk tale  – tag me on Instagram @MaiStoryBookLibrary, Twitter @MaiStoryBook  – or post on FaceBook to share your your own reading adventures! I’d love to hear from you!~*

*~Until next time, Happy Reading~*