Have students pretend they are Freddie and write a journal entry explaining what they've learned about accepting changes in life and how they learned it.
Your students will love this moving story about a boy adjusting to a new stepmom, a new baby, and a move across the country. We adore Pam Muñoz Ryan, author of the Newbery-Honor-winning Echo and Esperanza Rising. (She’s not only an amazing author, she is a lovely person!)
Learning Objective: After reading a thought-provoking story by Pam Muñoz Ryan, students will explain what helps Freddie, the main character, adjust to a new home, school, and baby sister over the course of the story.
More About the Story
Skills
Character, vocabulary, close reading, plot, word choice, foreshadowing, setting, explanatory writing
Complexity Factors
Levels of Meaning/Purpose
“Freddie in the Shade” is about a boy who has difficulty accepting the many changes in his life. His sunglasses serve as a way for him to hide from change.
Structure
The story is told in the third person and is chronological.
Language
The language is mainly conversational and contains some dialogue.
Knowledge Demands
Familiarity with bakeries will be helpful.
Lexile
660L
1. Preparing to Read
Preview Text Features/Set a Purpose for Reading (3 minutes)
Vocabulary (15 minutes)
2. Close Reading
First Read: Get to Know the Text (20 minutes)
Read the story aloud as a class, or play our audio version as students follow along in their magazines.
Second Read: Unpack the Text (30 minutes)
Answers to Close-Reading Questions
3. Skill Building
Featured Skill: Character
Have students pretend they are Freddie and write a journal entry explaining what they've learned about accepting changes in life and how they learned it.
Readers Be sure to take advantage of the audio version of the story to support struggling readers. Have them listen to the story as they read along in the magazine. Then invite them to choose three of the questions in the margins to answer.
Pair this story with another text about a character learning to accept changes. Try One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia or Real Friends by Shannon Hale and LeUyen Pham.
Have students locate San Diego and Minneapolis on a map, and use the legend to figure out how far Freddie moved. If students have moved from another country to your area, ask them to figure out how far they moved as a comparison.
Offer this story as a choice for students to read on their own. Confer with them to check comprehension, using the close-reading questions in the margins as a guide, or have them complete the character activity independently.