HomeMy WebLinkAboutRead Aloud Book Gr. 3-Lesson 17Jess woke up on Saturday morning and sighed. The summer was almost
over, and nothing interesting had happened. She hadn’t gone on vacation. She
hadn’t learned to dance. She hadn’t even read one good book. Jess scanned
the pages of her diary, looking for something interesting to tell her best friend,
Dan. But there were no summer stories in Jess’s diary.
Dan was coming back from camp tomorrow. What would Jess say when Dan
showed her his camp photos and asked, “What did you do this summer?”
After lunch, Jess walked down the hill to the creek behind her house. She
always went to the creek when she wanted to stay unobserved. No one ever
saw her or bothered her there. Jess dug her fi ngers into the mud on the bank
and frowned.
Then Jess saw something strange in the brown sand on the bottom of the
creek. She looked intently into the water. Her eyes searched carefully for the
shape she had seen. It was the same color as the sand and was not obvious
unless you knew what you were looking for. There it was! Jess took off her shoes
and socks. She stepped into the cool water and reached down into the sand.
Jess picked up a small, round object. She turned it around in her hands,
detecting its size and shape. It was exactly the same shape as a snail shell. Like
a snail shell, the object had sharp, distinct marks on it in the form of a spiral.
But when Jess studied it closely, it was evident that this was not a snail shell. It
was as hard and solid as a stone.
Jess’s curiosity about the rock was acute. She wanted very much to
understand what it was. Did someone carve a stone into the shape of a snail?
Or could a snail somehow turn into stone? Then Jess had a sudden insight. An
idea fl ashed into her head from something her science teacher had said. Jess
had found a fossil—the remains of an animal that lived long ago and turned
into rock! She could be holding a snail that was millions of years old!
Jess smiled. This would be the perfect summer story to tell Dan.
COMPREHENSION What words tell how carefully Jess is looking at and
thinking about the fossil? What does Jess learn from her discovery?
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Sam Sharpeye was a newspaper reporter in Granville, Ohio. One morning, Mrs.
Sally Mae West of 231 Oak Street called him to report that something very strange
had just happened to her garden.
“I heard a strange sound last night, Sam,” Mrs. West said. “It sounded like a
giant trumpet. When I woke up, the temporary fence I built to keep rabbits away was
crushed. And all my green vegetables were gone!”
“Do you think a rabbit did it?” asked Sam.
“If a rabbit crushed my fence,” Mrs. West replied, “then that rabbit was ten feet
tall and it played the trumpet!”
Police Chief Smith confi rmed that something very big had wrecked Mrs. West’s
garden. But the only clues seemed to be the giant footprints and the strange noise
that Mrs. West heard. “She’s reported those sounds previously,” Chief Smith said,
“but at that time we didn’t know what to do about it.”
Sam Sharpeye called a scientist from City College, Dr. I.M. Bright. Sam described
the clues, and the scientist told him that he knew what caused the garden mess.
“It was a dinosaur for sure!” said Dr. Bright.
“A dinosaur?” cried Sam, initially surprised. “You’re kidding me!”
“I have a theory,” said Dr. Bright, “that the era of dinosaurs did not end seventy
million years ago. Something big happened that transformed the dinosaurs’ world.
The dinosaurs went through a decline and eventually most of them died—but not all
of them. A few may have adapted to the change and made it out alive.”
Dr. Bright went to inspect Mrs. West’s garden. The giant footprints matched the
fossils of a dinosaur called the parasaurophus. Plus, the parasaurophus had a large
bone on its head that was shaped like a tube. Some scientists think the dinosaur used
it like a horn to talk to other dinosaurs. Dr. Bright believed this explained the strange
noises Mrs. West heard at night.
Other scientists disagreed with Dr. Bright. “That idea is hogwash,” said Dr. Snodgrass.
“The dinosaurs gradually died out millions of years ago.”
Mrs. West was not sure what to believe, but she knew something big ruined her garden!
COMPREHENSION What words about time do you hear in the story? Why is Dr.
Bright’s theory so unbelievable?
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