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How can Liz choose just one delicious dish to sum up who she is?
Learning Objective: Students will use words and images to make inferences about a character in a graphic novel-style story.
Presentation View
Test Your Food Knowledge!
You’re about to read “A Recipe for Disaster.” In the story, students mention foods from all over the world. What do you know about these foods? Take the quiz to find out. (Don’t worry if you don’t know the answers. By the time you’re done, you’ll be an expert. You might also be very, very hungry!)
1. What is the main ingredient in borscht?
fish
onions
beets
tomatoes
Borscht is a beet soup that comes from Russia and Eastern Europe. The beets are what give the soup its bright color! It tastes a little sour and can be served hot or cold.
2. You can’t make burritos for lunch if you’re out of _______.
bananas
spaghetti
tortillas
all of the above
Burritos come from Mexico but are eaten around the world. A burrito is a flour tortilla filled with a mix of ingredients, usually including meat and cheese. The word burrito means “little donkey.” The dish may have gotten its name because it holds, or carries, a lot of food. (Donkeys are animals known for carrying heavy loads on their backs!)
3. If you love jerk chicken, you can thank the people of ______ for creating this spicy dish.
Canada
Jamaica
Sweden
Turkey
Jerk chicken is from Jamaica, an island nation in the Caribbean. The chicken is rubbed with a hot, spicy mixture before it is cooked.
4. What type of soda is used to make soda bread?
cola
soda water
ginger ale
baking soda
Most bread gets fluffy thanks to an ingredient called yeast. But soda bread is made with a powder called baking soda. Soda bread is slightly sweet and often has raisins in it. Irish people have been making it since the 1800s.
5. If you’re in the mood for kimchi and BBQ beef, you should go to a ______ restaurant.
Korean
French
German
Mexican
Kimchi and BBQ beef are part of Korean cooking. Kimchi is spicy pickled vegetables, such as cabbage. Korean BBQ beef is sliced beef that’s soaked in a sauce and then grilled or fried in a pan.
6. Who were the first people to make corn bread?
Irish people
African people
Native American people
Canadian people
Corn bread is a very popular side dish in the Southern United States. But it was first made by Native Americans. It is made with cornmeal—a flour made from crushed corn.
7. Yakitori is a dish that got its start in _______.
Japan
Mexico
Texas
China
Yakitori is a Japanese chicken dish. The chicken is seasoned with spices and grilled on a skewer, or pointy stick.
8. A wonton is a type of ______.
cookie
dumpling
pastry
none of the above
Dumplings are made by wrapping a thin dough around a meat or vegetable filling, then cooking it. Wontons are small dumplings popular in Chinese cooking. They are often filled with pork and served in soup. The term wonton means “swallowing clouds” in Chinese.
As you read, look for clues about how the main character, Liz, feels. You’ll find them in both the words and the pictures!
A Recipe for Disaster
Meet the Author!
Jerry Craft is an author and illustrator. His graphic novel New Kid won the 2020 Newbery Medal
THINK AND WRITE
Imagine you are Liz. Write a letter to a family member about how you came up with the idea for your new recipe.
Get background, tips, and more resources for teaching graphic novels with Scholastic’s “Guide to Using Graphic Novels With Children and Teens.” You can find more ideas and a teacher discussion of graphic novels at this Cult of Pedagogy blog post.
The creator of our very first graphic story in Storyworks is none other than the Newbery-award winning author and artist Jerry Craft. In this 6-minute video, he shares the story behind how he came to write his prizewinning graphic novel, “New Kid.”
This step-by-step guide for creating comics, by illustrator Jessica Emmett, walks kids through making their own graphic stories. It will also help them develop a deeper understanding of the graphic novels they read.
Your students can use our blank cartoon panels to create their own graphic stories. You can find them above!
Last year, we featured the first graphic poem in a Storyworks 3 issue. Share the poem “A Circle of Sun” with your students. Ask them to compare and contrast these two different graphic features.
More About the Article
Content-Area Connections
Social-Emotional Learning: social awareness (appreciating diversity); responsible decision-making (identifying problems, solving problems)
Key Skills
inference, text features, vocabulary, key idea, visual literacy, problem and solution, character, figurative language, making connections, narrative writing
1. PREPARING TO READ
Preview Text Features/Take a Quiz (10 minutes)
We are thrilled to offer for the first time in Storyworks 3 a graphic novel-style story. Newbery Medal winner Jerry Craft wrote and drew the story.
Ask students to look at page 16. Direct their attention to the title, subtitle, and Meet the Author! panel. Ask students how this story looks different from other fiction stories they’ve read. Have students make a prediction about what the story will be about.
To acquaint students with the foods mentioned in the story, invite them to take the online quiz “Test Your Food Knowledge!” Emphasize that this quiz is just for fun.
Introduce Vocabulary (15 minutes)
We have highlighted in bold four terms that may be challenging and defined them on the page: cultures, represents, heritage, and generations [Note: Point out that the word generations is used in this story to refer to something that’s been part of a family for many years.]
Preview these terms by projecting or distributing our Vocabulary Skill Builder (available in your Resources tab) and completing it as a class. You may also play our Vocabulary Slideshow, where images help students with comprehension.
Set a Purpose for Reading (5 minutes)
Graphic novels have increasingly been used in the classroom over the past decade. Like traditional prose, they offer opportunities to think about literary elements like character, plot, and theme. The visual presentation can make a story more accessible and engaging, while also challenging readers to make inferences based on what they see—or don’t see. Our Can’t Miss Teaching Extras, at Storyworks 3 Digital, provide links to resources for teaching graphic novels.
Call on volunteers to read aloud the Think and Read and Think and Write boxes on pages 16 and 21. These prompts and the Skill Builders support the story’s featured skill, inference. Remind students to keep in mind the Think and Read prompt as they read the story.
2. CLOSE READING
Reading and Unpacking the Text
First Read: Read the story as a class or have students follow along as they listen to the Editor Read-Aloud.
Have students identify story details and vocabulary they don’t understand.
Second Read: Project, distribute, or assign the Close-Reading and Critical-Thinking Questions (available in your Resources tab). Discuss them as a class, rereading sentences or passages as necessary. (Alternatively, assign all or part of the Learning Journey Slideshow, which contains the questions—along with other activities from this lesson plan and a link to the story.)
Close-Reading Questions (30 minutes)
Critical-Thinking Question (10 minutes)
The phrase “a recipe for disaster” is used to say that something has all the right parts (or ingredients) to create a problem. Why do you think this story is titled “A Recipe for Disaster”? (figurative language/text features) The story was probably given this title because it’s about choosing a recipe for a class assignment. Also, at first the assignment creates a problem for Liz. She can’t decide what dish to choose. In the end, it’s not really a “recipe for disaster” because Liz figures out how to solve her problem in a way that feels good for everyone.
3. SEL FOCUS
Responsible Decision-Making
Liz, the main character in the story, thinks that she has to select between two choices. She finds this difficult because she doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. Ask: Can you think of a time when you had to make a difficult choice between two things (or two people)? How did you feel? What did you do?
4. SKILL BUILDING AND WRITING
Featured Skill: Inference
Distribute or digitally assign the Inference Skill Builder (available in your Resources tab) and have students complete it in class or for homework. Show the short video “What Is an Inference?” to review and reinforce how to use this skill.
GREAT IDEAS FOR REMOTE LEARNING
Our Learning Journey Slideshow (available in your Resources tab) is designed to make your life easier. Have students move through at their own pace or assign smaller chunks for different days. You can also customize the slideshow to your liking.
Direct students to our Create Your Own Graphic Story templates (available in your Resources tab) and ask them to create an additional scene for the story or to make up their own graphic short story.
This graphic format can be ideal for struggling readers. They can practice comprehension skills with the support of visual cues and minimal text. Guide them to complete the Inference Skill Builder.
Graphic novels (and short graphic stories) are a great way to reach ELLs at all levels of proficiency. Before reading the story, take a “picture walk” with students. Ignoring the words, view the panels and ask students what they see and what they can infer about the story.
Invite students to rewrite this story as a traditional narrative, adding descriptive passages to replace the images. Alternatively, divide students into groups and ask each group to rewrite one part of the story as a narrative.
Have students make an ad to help sell Liz’s burri-tons. Ask students to imagine that Liz is opening a stand to sell her new dish and needs to let customers know what a burri-ton is, how delicious it is, and how much it costs. Students can create their ads online or use paper and markers (and ask an adult to help photograph the finished product to share with the class). Encourage them to illustrate or decorate their ads.