Storytown Grade 5 Lesson 18 - Kennett Consolidated...

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Main Idea and Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464

Learn how authors organize information.

Vocabulary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466

Read, write, and learn the meanings of new words.

“Project Mulberry” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468by Linda Sue Park • illustrated by Adam Gustavson

• Learn the features of realistic fiction.

• Monitor comprehension by adjusting your reading rate for difficult sections of text.

“Journey on the Silk Road” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482by Luann Hankom • illustrated by Fiona White

Read about traveling on the Silk Road in ancient times.

Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486

• Compare texts.

• Review vocabulary.

• Reread for fluency.

• Write a description of a life cycle.

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Genre: Realistic Fiction

Genre: Historical Fiction

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Detail Detail Detail

Main Idea

Main Idea and DetailsThe main idea is what a text is

mostly about. Details tell more about

the main idea. The main idea is often

stated in a topic sentence. It may

appear at the beginning, in the middle,

or at the end of a text. As you read,

look for the main idea and details to

help you better understand the text.

Read the whole text to find its main idea. Then look for the details that support the main idea.

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Read the paragraph below. Then look at the graphic

organizer. It shows the main idea of the paragraph and

three details that support the main idea.

Silk has been an important material for many centuries. Hundreds of years ago in China, silk was so valuable that it was used as money. Farmers used silk to pay their taxes. The government gave workers silk instead of money. People also used silk to trade with foreign countries for other items. The Chinese kept the process of producing silk a secret for almost 3,000 years.

Look back at the paragraph. What other detail could you add to the graphic organizer?

Main Idea


Silk has been a highly prized material for many centuries.

Chinese farmers

used silk to pay

their taxes.

The Chinese

government paid

workers with silk.

China kept the

process of

producing silk

a secret.

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phobia

wispy

compartments

invasion

swayed

vetoed

Mouse in a Maze

January 3

Dear Diary,

You know I’ve always had a phobia about

mice. I don’t like their thin, wispy whiskers or

their shrill squeaks. Imagine my horror when

I walked into science class this morning. Four

mouse mazes were sitting on a table! Each

maze had two small compartments, one at each

end. The mice were in one compartment, and

a reward was in the other. Our teacher told

us that tomorrow we would time the mice

as they made their way through the mazes to

reach their rewards.

Four mice may not seem like a

lot, but when you’re afraid of

them, it feels like an invasion!

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This week your task is to use the Vocabulary

Words in your writing. In your vocabulary

journal, write sentences to show the meanings

of the words. For example, you could write some ideas for

people who want to get over a phobia, or explain what is in

each of the compartments of your backpack. Write about as

many of the Vocabulary Words as you can. Share your writing

with your classmates.

January 4

Dear Diary,

Today we timed the mice going

through the mazes. When the mice

left their compartments, they stood

on their hind legs and swayed side

to side. For a moment I forgot my

fear. I was too busy wondering

which one would be the fastest.

Every mouse managed to

find its reward, though some

were much quicker than others.

I was hoping that my group’s

mouse would be the fastest. The

teacher vetoed my suggestion that

we let the mice try again.

At least the mice got a treat

for their efforts.

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Realistic Fiction

Genre StudyRealistic fiction has characters and events that are like people and events in real life. As you read, look for

• characters that have feelings that real people have.

• characters with problems that might happen in real life.

Comprehension StrategyMonitor comprehension while you read by adjusting your reading rate. When you come to difficult sections of text, read them more slowly.

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by Linda Sue Parkillustrated by Adam Gustavson

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Julia Song and her best friend, Patrick, are entering projects in two categories at the state fair. Together the friends have decided to raise silkworms and document the process for the contest. Then Julia will use the silk thread spun by the worms in an embroidery project, but she hasn’t decided on a design. Halfway through their project, Julia and Patrick have videotaped the worms’ life cycle from eggs to caterpillars. They have also overcome several challenges, including keeping their pesky younger brothers—Kenny, Hugh, Ben, and Nicky—from getting in the way. However, Julia has just learned about Patrick’s fear of worms.

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When they were twenty-four days old, the caterpillars stopped eating. I didn’t panic because Patrick had warned me it would happen. “They’ll stop eating and change color—they’ll turn yellowish,” he’d said. “That means they’re getting ready to spin their cocoons. Tomorrow we should move them into egg cartons.”

Patrick had read that the caterpillars liked to have their own little compartments to spin in. The brochure suggested toilet-paper tubes cut in half or egg cartons. I’d saved two egg cartons, and Patrick brought over a third from his house.

There were twenty-six worms. “I’m not going to put them twelve, twelve, and two in the cartons,” I said. “I think they’d like it better to be divided up more evenly. I’m going to put them eight, nine and nine instead.”

The next day we cut through the hinges of the egg cartons so the tops would be easier to take off and put back on. Patrick’s research said the caterpillars liked to spin in the dark, so we’d be leaving the tops on most of the time, but we still wanted to be able to watch them once in a while.

I picked up each caterpillar carefully and let it crawl on my hand for a few seconds. Then I put it into an egg pocket.

Some of the caterpillars sort of stood up halfway and swayed around like they were investigating their new homes. Then they coiled themselves up neatly. We cleaned out the old leaves one last time and put the egg cartons into the aquarium.

Now that I knew about Patrick’s phobia, I couldn’t believe I’d never noticed it before. If he wasn’t shooting tape, he was fussing with the focus or playing back what he’d taped or switching to the regular camera. He never looked at the caterpillars straight on. The only way he ever looked at them was through a lens.

I could tell he was still really creeped out by them. I tried to think of something that scared me the same way. I didn’t like spiders verymuch. . . . When I was little, I slept with a night-light on. . . . But I knew neither of those was really a phobia, not like Patrick’s.

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I couldn’t imagine what it felt like, to be that scared of something. Sometimes I wanted to talk him out of it again, make him hold one, stuff like that. But that didn’t seem fair. I just had to try to understand in other ways. Like by thinking how it was very brave of him to want to do a worm project at all. And how he’d decided to do it both to try to get over his phobia and because he thought it was what I wanted.

My best friend had a phobia. If he could deal with it, so could I.

The next morning I went to check on the caterpillars. The egg cartons wouldn’t open. Somehow they had gotten stuck closed. I showed Patrick when he came over.

“I can only get them open a little,” I said. “Wait, let me try again.”I held one of the cartons at eye level, pulled at the top, and managed to

open it a crack so I could peek in.“Wow!”“What is it?” Patrick asked. “What do you see?”“They’re going nuts!” I said. “They’re moving their heads around

like crazy. I can’t see very well, but they’re all, like, frantic. Do you think something’s wrong? Maybe they don’t like it in there.”

“No, I think they’re okay,” Patrick said. “The silk comes out of their mouths, and the book said they’re constantly in motion while they’re weaving their cocoons. That’s gotta be what they’re doing. But why can’t you open the carton?”

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“There’s all this webbing. It’s stuck to the top and bottom—it’s like they’ve glued the carton shut. Maybe they want to make their cocoons in private.”

“That’s not it,” Patrick said. “They make a little sort of hammock thing first, to hold the cocoon. And they have to string it up somehow. So they’re doing it from top to bottom. They’re not gluing the carton shut on purpose.”

I watched for another few seconds. Then I closed the carton gently and put it back in the aquarium.

Patrick flapped his arms. “There’s no way I can film through that crack,” he said. “What a bummer—this would be the most interesting part.”

On the way to school we talked it over some more. “There’s gotta be some way to film them,” Patrick kept saying.


We were in luck—it was a Friday, so we had the whole weekend to work on the problem.

First we tried cutting a window into one of the cartons. This was a little scary. I picked the carton that held eight caterpillars—I knew I’d left the corner egg pockets empty, so that was where I cut the window. I used nail scissors and poked a hole with the point, then made tiny tiny snips to cut a square. All the while I was praying that none of the caterpillars had moved into that space overnight.

I pulled out the little cardboard square and let out a huge breath. It was fine—there wasn’t any caterpillar under it. But I couldn’t really see any of the other ones either, unless I put my eye right up to the window and tilted the carton a little.

Patrick shook his head. “We gotta make the window bigger,” he said.So I did that next. I cut more of the carton, so three egg pockets

would be exposed. But when I lifted off the flap of cardboard, a caterpillar came with it, trailing a little cloud of webbing.

Patrick jumped back in alarm.


“Oh no!” I cried out, then rescued the poor thing as it dangled in the air.

I pulled the caterpillar off the flap—the webbing was really sticky—and put it back into the carton. Then I checked it over anxiously. It seemed fine, but the first thing it did was try to wiggle away from the open window.

“This isn’t working,” I said. “See, it doesn’t like being out in the open.”

I ran into the house and found a roll of masking tape. Then I ran out to the porch again, taped the bits of cardboard together, and stuck them back onto the carton.

I felt much better once I’d done that. It had made me quite panicky—the caterpillar was obviously upset by our invasion of its privacy.

“Gak,” Patrick said. “Now what?”

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Kenny came out to the porch.“Hey, Patrick. Hey, Julia. Whatcha doing?”Patrick explained the problem to him.“So you need to leave us alone,” I said to Kenny and glared

at him. “We have to work on this.”Kenny ignored me. He looked at Patrick. “Just put one in a little

jar,” Kenny said. “That way you could film it through the glass.”Patrick looked at him and then at me. Then he laughed, clapped

Kenny on the shoulder, and said exactly what I was thinking. “Why didn’t we think of that?”

I opened the cardboard window one last time, took out the same caterpillar, and put it into a little glass jar. We’d poked air holes in the metal lid. We kept the jar in the aquarium alongside the egg cartons, and I put a cup upside down over it so it would be dark most of the time. But whenever Patrick wanted to film, we took the jar out for a few minutes.

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It was so cool. My parents came out to see, and Patrick’s parents brought Hugh-Ben-Nicky over that evening to have a look. The porch was very crowded; I worried that all those people would upset the caterpillar. But it didn’t seem to care, not even when both the twins started jumping up and down and screeching with excitement.

The caterpillar moved its head constantly. Sometimes fast, sometimes a little slower, but never stopping—it looked like really hard work. The silk came out of its mouth just as Patrick had said.

At first the silk was almost invisible. You could see the strands only if you looked really hard.

By the next morning, though, the caterpillar had already wrapped itself in a layer of silk. It looked like it was living inside a cloud. We could see its black mouth moving, moving, busy, busy, busy. Patrick wanted to stay up all night to film it, but both our moms vetoed that idea. The following morning he was at our house in his pajamas again. The silk was almost solid; now we could barely see the black mouth moving inside.

I was glad Patrick was taping it; I’d be able to watch it again as many times as I wanted. But I knew it would never be as special on tape as it was now, happening right in front of me, those wispy threads at first barely more than air, and then like a cloud, the caterpillar spinning layer after layer after layer, each layer made of one hundred percent real silk thread.

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I stood with a piece of paper held behind my back. “I am a genius,”I said to Patrick.

It was the afternoon of the third day of the spinning, a Sunday. Patrick was sitting on the couch in our living room. I’d told him to sit there while I went and got the paper from my room. He raised his eyebrows at me but didn’t say anything.

“I’ve decided what I’m going to embroider. I’m going to do”—I paused dramatically, then whipped out the paper—“the Life Cycle of the Silkworm.”

I held up the sketch I’d drawn.“Egg. Worm. Cocoon. Moth.” I pointed to the drawings one by one.

“And wait till you hear the best part. I’m going to use regular embroidery floss to do the egg and the worm. And the moth, too. But for the cocoon, I’m going to use the thread we make. The cocoon is made of silk in real life, and it will be made of silk in the picture too, get it?”

Patrick grinned, a really huge grin.He got it, all right. I almost felt like hugging him. He put his hands up

in the air and bent forward a few times like he was bowing to me.“Julia Song, you are a genius. We are absolutely, positively, going to win

a prize at the fair.”I made a silly curtsy back at him. “Thank you, thank you.” I’d thought

of doing the life cycle a while back. But it was the caterpillar that had given me the idea for the cocoon part. I’d watched it spin for a while right before I went to bed, and I’d woken up that morning with my genius plan.

I had known right away that it was perfect.

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1 How do caterpillars weave their cocoons? SUMMARIZE

2 Read the paragraph on page 471 that begins “Now that I knew about Patrick’s phobia, . . . .” What is the main idea of the paragraph? What is the most important detail that supports the main idea?

MAIN IDEA AND DETAILS

3 From what you know about Patrick, is it believable that he would show up in his pajamas to film the caterpillars? Explain your answer. MAKE JUDGMENTS

4 What kind of science project would you be most interested in doing? Explain your choice. EXPRESS PERSONAL OPINIONS

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5 WRITE Many science contests require a written explanation of the steps involved in a project. Imagine that you are Julia or Patrick. Write an outline of the steps in your project. Use information and details from the selection in your answer. SHORT RESPONSE


About the AuthorLinda Sue ParkLinda Sue Park was raised with little connection to her Korean roots. Aft er college, she studied and worked in Great Britain. When she moved back to the United States with her husband and children, she wanted to introduce her children to their Korean heritage. She began to research Korean history, and from that research came her fi rst four books for children.

About the IllustratorAdam GustavsonAdam Gustavson has never had a phobia involving worms or caterpillars but thinks he may have developed one while working on the illustrations for this story. He began drawing somewhere around the age of two, and is the illustrator of several books for children. He lives in New Jersey with his family.


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Social Studies

Historical Fiction

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My name is Fa Zang. I am 12 years old, and the year is

A.D. 742. I am excited! I am joining my father on my first

caravan to a far-off city called Dunhuang. My father has

obtained porcelain, rhubarb, herbal medicine, and silk cloth

to trade. What treasures will we find on our journey?

We begin our journey in Chang’an ('chäng•'än), China,

where we live. Chang’an is a bustling city with two million

people. Our caravan includes private merchants such as my

father, Chinese government officials, and of course, camels.

Camels may be slow, but they are sturdy animals that can

carry our heavy loads.

Our prized trading item is silk, which comes from

silkworms. People in foreign lands use our silk cloth for

fancy clothes.

We leave Chang’an and travel through the Wei River

valley along the Imperial Highway. The landscape is green

and yellow—bright green fields and mulberry trees. The

ground is yellow with loess, a fine dust that blows in the

wind. If the wind is harsh, I will put a mask over my face,

so the dust doesn’t get inside my mouth or eyes.

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At night, my feet are sore from walking. Our caravan stops at a

shelter, so we don’t have to sleep out in the open. Other traders

are at the shelter, too. They have dates, pistachio nuts, peaches,

and pears. Someone tosses me a pear. Its sweet, slippery juice

drips down my chin while I eat it.

The days and nights continue. We stop at farms for food

along the way and meet caravans coming and going. We continue

northwest through forests and hills and cross the Huang ('hwäng)

River, sloshing through the water. We travel the foothills of the

Nan Shan Mountains until we reach Dunhuang. I am tired and sore

from the journey that has lasted many weeks. I am intrigued as

my father starts exchanging goods with caravans from the West.

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There are rare items such as green and white jade, fine-colored

glass, and exotic perfumes. My father trades his silk for white

jade and Persian metalwork. He trades the rhubarb for pistachio

nuts and walnuts. He exchanges the herbal medicine for musical

instruments. The government officials trade silk for horses. The

officials are pleased—the horses will be for the emperor’s army.

The men from the West describe unusual, foreign places on

their journeys: Tyre and Byzantium. I have not heard of these

cities before. They speak of the difficult journeys through the

Taklamakan Desert and the Pamirs. Such adventures!

I can barely fall asleep, for thoughts of these exotic places

and peoples fill my brain. I will travel to these cities someday! My

father and I will travel back to Chang’an, so I must get my rest. It

has been an exciting journey. I dream of travels yet to come.


Comparing Texts1. What kind of science project would you enjoy working on?

What would you expect to learn from your project?

2. How are silk worms important to both Julia Song in “Project

Mulberry” and Fa Zang in “Journey on the Silk Road”?

3. What lessons do you think Julia and Patrick learned from their

science fair project? How could these lessons help them in

the future?

compartments

swayed

phobia

invasion

vetoed

wispy

Word WebsWork with a partner. Choose two Vocabulary Words.

Create a web for each word. In the outer circles, write

words and phrases that are related to the Vocabulary

Word. Explain how each word or phrase is related to

the Vocabulary Word.

phobia heights

extreme fear

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Partner ReadingWork with a partner to choose a section

of “Project Mulberry” to reread aloud.

Read the text aloud as your partner

listens and times you. Have your partner

give you feedback on your reading

rate. Read the section again, and try to

increase your reading rate. Then switch

roles and repeat the process.

Describe a Life CycleThink about an animal, such as a frog,

that goes through many changes as it

grows. Write a paragraph describing the

life cycle of that animal.

Voice

✔ I used a serious, informative tone in my writing.

✔ I used details to support my topic.

✔ I used a graphic organizer to organize my ideas.


Main Idea

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Storytown Grade 5 Lesson 18 - Kennett Consolidated...

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