Misadventures of Salem Hyde: Book One: Spelling Trouble written and illustrated by Frank Cammuso

Misadventures of Salem Hyde: Book One: Spelling Trouble 

(The Misadventures of Salem Hyde 1)
Frank Cammuso
GN520L

            This graphic novel is about how a little girl, Salem Hyde, is a budding witch and her issues with learning magic in a non-magic environment. This story covers a spelling bee at Salem’s school. After being taunted by a classmate, Salem (accidentally) signs up for the spelling bee. The other students all get homonym words and spell the wrong word of the two possible ones. Salem misspells her word, but not a homonym. She runs out of the event after noticing she was accidentally casting shapeshifting spells on a teacher during the other students’ turns. Her cat comes and saves the day (fixes the spells.)

SLJ’s Top 10 Graphic Novels of 2013

Learning Activity:
After reading through the text, the students will go over the spelling bee scene and review the words the teachers asked and what the students responded with. The student will look at both words, which were all homonyms, and identify what each word means and define what homonyms are. The illustrations and story during the spelling bee scene will help the student see how the words sound the same but were spelled differently and mean different things.

Standards:
CCSS.ELA-L.RL.3.1 - Ask and answer questions to demonstrate an understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers.
CCSS.ELA-L.RL.3.7 - Explain how specific aspects of a text's illustrations contribute to what is conveyed by the words in a story (e.g., create mood, emphasize aspects of a character or setting)
CCSS.ELA-L.RF.3.4.C - Use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary.

Goal:
The student will understand homonyms and be able to recall several different homonyms from the text.

Objective:
Cognitive -
            The student will read Misadventures of Salem Hyde: Spelling Trouble and focus on the spelling bee scene’s text and illustrations.
            The student will write out each set of homonyms, from the teacher’s giving the words to spell and what the students replied with.
            The student will define what each word means based on the example sentence from the text and what the student’s word means from the illustrations.

Outcome:
The student will compare homonyms, seeing how words that sound the same mean different things and can provide examples of homonyms from the text.