ELA Lesson Plan and Rationale

Grades 4–5 Text Exemplars

Stories

Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Illustrated by John Tenniel. New York: William Morrow, 1992.

(1865)

From Chapter 1: “Down the Rabbit-Hole”

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice

she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, ‘and what is the use

of a book,’ thought Alice ‘without pictures or conversation?’

So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid),

whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when

suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.

There was nothing so VERY remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so VERY much out of the way to hear the Rabbit

say to itself, ‘Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!’ (When she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought

to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually TOOK A WATCH

OUT OF ITS WAISTCOAT-POCKET, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across

her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and

burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large

rabbit-hole under the hedge.

In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.

Burnett, Frances Hodgson. The Secret Garden. New York: HarperCollins, 1985. (1911)

From “There’s No One Left”

When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It was true, too. She had a little thin face and a little thin body, thin light hair and a sour

expression. Her hair was yellow, and her face was yellow because she had been born in India and had always been ill

in one way or another. Her father had held a position under the English Government and had always been busy and ill

himself, and her mother had been a great beauty who cared only to go to parties and amuse herself with gay people.

She had not wanted a little girl at all, and when Mary was born she handed her over to the care of an Ayah, who was

made to understand that if she wished to please the Mem Sahib she must keep the child out of sight as much as possible. So when she was a sickly, fretful, ugly little baby she was kept out of the way, and when she became a sickly,

fretful, toddling thing she was kept out of the way also. She never remembered seeing familiarly anything but the dark

faces of her Ayah and the other native servants, and as they always obeyed her and gave her her own way in everything, because the Mem Sahib would be angry if she was disturbed by her crying, by the time she was six years old

she was as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived. The young English governess who came to teach her to read

and write disliked her so much that she gave up her place in three months, and when other governesses came to try

to fill it they always went away in a shorter time than the first one. So if Mary had not chosen to really want to know

how to read books she would never have learned her letters at all.

One frightfully hot morning, when she was about nine years old, she awakened feeling very cross, and she became

crosser still when she saw that the servant who stood by her bedside was not her Ayah.

“Why did you come?” she said to the strange woman. “I will not let you stay. Send my Ayah to me.”

The woman looked frightened, but she only stammered that the Ayah could not come and when Mary threw herself

into a passion and beat and kicked her, she looked only more frightened and repeated that it was not possible for the

Ayah to come to Missie Sahib.

There was something mysterious in the air that morning. Nothing was done in its regular order and several of the

native servants seemed missing, while those whom Mary saw slunk or hurried about with ashy and scared faces. But

no one would tell her anything and her Ayah did not come. She was left alone as the morning went on, and

at last, she wandered out into the garden and began to play by herself under a tree near the veranda. She pretended

that she was making a flowerbed, and she stuck big scarlet hibiscus blossoms into little heaps of earth, all the time