Article
Art by Shannon Wright
Mini Graphic Novel,

Pine School Pals: Halloween Twins

Meet the Pine School second-grade class. Today Niki and Sara have a big problem.

By Meg Richardson and Laine Falk
From the October/November 2023 Issue

Learning Objective: Children will practice finding the problem and solution in a fiction story.

Lexile® measure: 400L
Featured Skill: Use Visuals, Main Idea,
Topic: Social-emotional learning,
Common Core Standards
  • RL.2.1 Key details RL.2.3 Describe how characters respond to events RL.2.5 Story structure RL.2.7 Use information from illustrations to understand characters, setting, and plot RL.2.10 Read grade-2-appropriate stories SL.2 Participate in conversations about grade-2 texts
TEKS Standards
  • Health:
    (3) Mental health and wellness—social and emotional health. The student identifies and applies strategies to develop socio-emotional health, self-regulation, and healthy relationships. The student is expected to: (E) describe the qualities of a good friend; (G) identify the feelings and perspectives of others by interpreting their verbal and nonverbal cues; and (H) identify ways to prevent and repair broken friendships.

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Pine School Pals: Halloween Twins

By Meg Richardson and Laine Falk

video (1)
Activities (4)
Skills Activities
Answer Key (1)
video (1)
Activities (4) Download All Quizzes and Activities
Skills Activities
Answer Key (1)

About the Story

Social and Life Skills

Resolving conflicts constructively

Step-by-Step Lesson Plan
Download the Lesson Plan

Implementation

  • Small group; whole group; independent reading

Pairings and Text Connections

  • From the Storyworks 2 archive:
    This comic is part of a series. Students can look at past print issues or go online to read about the Pine School Pals' other adventures!

Before-Reading Resources

  • Text Preview Bookmarks:
    (10 minutes) Kids can cut out the fiction bookmark and
    use it to preview the text.

Suggested Reading Focus

Problem/solution, text navigation (30 minutes)

  • Read the first page with your students. You can assign  students different roles and read this mini graphic novel aloud like a short play! The main characters are introduced on the first page.

After-Reading Skills Practice (15 minutes for each activity)

  • Problem and Solution: This activity helps students reflect on the structure of the comic they have just read.
  • Comics Feature Hunt: This activity helps students identify  features of comics.
  • A Halloween Story: Parts of speech practice. Students can fill in the blanks to make a silly story about trick-or-treating.

Text-to-Speech