A Guide For Using The Hundred Dresses In The Classroom

Teaching literature unit based on the popular children's story, Hundred dresses.

Eleanor Estes's The Hundred Dresses won a Newbery Honor in 1945 and has never been out of print since. At the heart of the story is Wanda Petronski, a Polish girl in a Connecticut school who is ridiculed by her classmates for wearing the same faded blue dress every day. Wanda claims she has one hundred dresses at home, but everyone knows she doesn't and bullies her mercilessly. The class feels terrible when Wanda is pulled out of the school, but by that time it's too late for apologies. Maddie, one of Wanda's classmates, ultimately decides that she is "never going to stand by and say nothing again." This powerful, timeless story has been reissued with a new letter from the author's daughter Helena Estes, and with the Caldecott artist Louis Slobodkin's original artwork in beautifully restored color.

This standards-based instructional guide for literature will help support students as they read the novel The Hundred Dress, an inspirational story of a Polish girl who is bullied by her classmates for wearing the same dress every day. Using the engaging activities and lessons, students will learn how to use close reading techniques, respond to text-dependent questions, analyze the text to determine meaning, make summaries, and more. This invaluable resource is key to support the rich exploration of literature in today's classrooms.

Learn how to sponsor a successful, student-led book club for grades K through 12 that is fun, easy-to-implement, and encourages reading. Book Clubbing!: Successful Book Clubs for Young People offers practical tips on creating book clubs that involve students of all ages and reading levels—including special education students, second language learners, and reluctant readers—making it easy to have fun, productive, and educational book clubs and other reading events. The book begins with a discussion of the current research on reading and practical tips from experienced sponsors and participants, followed by suggestions on customizing book clubs to fit the students' needs and how to add "sparkle" to the club with field trips, readers theatre, guest speakers, and mystery games. The book offers a wide variety of reading activities, ensuring a dynamic, lively reading group. Numerous forms, booklists, booktalks, reading lists, and resource websites offer additional help for educators and library staff. Especially unique and valuable is the reading activities chapter that includes reproducible reading games, a readers theatre script, a folktale "rap," and various booktalks and contests.

In this State Standards-aligned Literature Kit™, we divide the novel by chapters or sections and feature reading comprehension and vocabulary questions. In every chapter, we include Before You Read and After You Read questions. The Before You Read activities prepare students for reading by setting a purpose for reading. They stimulate background knowledge and experience, and guide students to make connections between what they know and what they will learn. The After You Read activities check students' comprehension and extend their learning. Students are asked to give thoughtful consideration of the text through creative and evaluative short-answer questions and journal prompts. Also included are writing tasks, graphic organizers, comprehension quiz, test prep, word search, and crossword to further develop students' critical thinking and writing skills, and analysis of the text. About the Novel: The Hundred Dresses is a Newbery Honor winning story about a young girl who is teased and mocked by her classmates. Wanda Petronski is different from the rest of the children in her class. She is poor and friendless, and is seated in the worse seat in the classroom. Constantly teased and mocked by her classmates for wearing the same faded blue dress every day, Wanda claims to own 100 dresses. This obvious lie causes her peers to mock her even more, resulting in her father's decision to move her to a different school. Before she leaves, she enters a drawing contest where she designs 100 different dresses. She moves away before realizing she has won the contest and the respect of her classmates. The Hundred Dresses is a heartwarming story about hardships, acceptance and perseverance. All of our content is aligned to your State Standards and are written to Bloom's Taxonomy.

This emotionally resonant novel in verse by award-winning author Nikki Grimes celebrates choosing to be true to yourself. Garvey's father has always wanted Garvey to be athletic, but Garvey is interested in astronomy, science fiction, reading—anything but sports. Feeling like a failure, he comforts himself with food. Garvey is kind, funny, smart, a loyal friend, and he is also overweight, teased by bullies, and lonely. When his only friend encourages him to join the school chorus, Garvey's life changes. The chorus finds a new soloist in Garvey, and through chorus, Garvey finds a way to accept himself, and a way to finally reach his distant father—by speaking the language of music instead of the language of sports.

In a racially polarized classroom in 1970 Alabama, Lu’s talent for running track makes her a new best friend — and tests her mettle as she navigates the school’s social cliques. Miss Garrett’s classroom is like every other at our school. White kids sit on one side and black kids on the other. I'm one of the few middle-rowers who split the difference. Sixth-grader Lu Olivera just wants to keep her head down and get along with everyone in her class. Trouble is, Lu’s old friends have been changing lately — acting boy crazy and making snide remarks about Lu’s newfound talent for running track. Lu’s secret hope for a new friend is fellow runner Belinda Gresham, but in 1970 Red Grove, Alabama, blacks and whites don’t mix. As segregationist ex-governor George Wallace ramps up his campaign against the current governor, Albert Brewer, growing tensions in the state — and in the classroom — mean that Lu can’t stay neutral about the racial divide at school. Will she find the gumption to stand up for what’s right and to choose friends who do the same?