Happy Holidays from the Books That Grow team!

Whether you are counting all the pine needles on your Christmas tree, or eagerly anticipating watching the dancing lights of your Menorah or Kinera (if you celebrate Kwanzaa), we hope that your holidays are filled with family, friends, laughter and, well, books!

Although Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa all have different cultural origins, they speak the same language: the language of gift giving! All jokes aside, these holidays are less about the gifts themselves and more about what these gifts mean to us. For those of you who celebrate Kwanza, there is a word in Swahili, “Kawaida,” which translates as “tradition.” Although the act of exchanging gifts is practiced as a tradition, it is important not to lose sight of how and why we practice traditions in the first place.

The history of gift-giving is almost as old as the history of humankind. The earliest cultures shared presents to reinforce tribal loyalties, show reverence and respect for elders and, last but not least, as tokens of affection. Only in modern times have humans began sharing what anthropologists call “pure gifts,” or gifts given without any expectation of receiving something in return. For people all around the world, these “pure gifts” are the best emblems of what the the holiday season represents.

Few stories capture the true spirit of the holidays quite like O. Henry’s The Gift of the Magi. Through his wit and firsthand observations of human warmth at its finest, O. Henry takes the timeless tropes of love and sacrifice and refashions them in a gift box for modern readers. For all you teachers out there, teach the holidays the right way with our brand new teacher guide for The Gift of the Magi!

Check Out Our New Teacher Guides!

The Books That Grow content team has been working diligently to produce Common Core-aligned teacher guides for all of our 135 (and growing) books. So far, we have over twenty five guides, covering pieces such as What to The Slave is The Fourth of July?, by Frederick Douglass, The Masque of The Red Death, by Edgar Allan Poe, our version of the Greek myth Arachne, our biography of Albert Einstein, and many more.

Each guide is made up of the following seven sections.

Things To Know features a short summary of the book and a discussion of its historical, literary or curricular context.

Before Reading provides teachers with quick-write and discussion questions they can use to prime students to think about the author’s intentions, and to get them thinking about themes soon to be encountered in the work.

During Reading suggests questions teachers can use to direct students’ attention to important structural elements of the text, encourage students to hone their close reading abilities, and to consider the significance of style elements such as tone and word choice.

After Reading provides teachers with discussion questions and essay and project prompts designed to help students consolidate their understanding of the text by encouraging them to think of overarching patterns, and to make big-picture takeaways.  

Connections In Text suggests other texts in the Books That Grow library that teachers may want to pair with the current text. Based upon the learning principle of elaborative processing,   this practice helps students build domain knowledge and reinforces skills across different works.

Further Readings suggests supplemental websites for both teachers and students.

Domain and Target Vocabulary highlights important domain-specific vocabulary and challenging grade-level appropriate vocabulary contained within the book. Teachers can use this information to pre-teach key vocabulary, highlight words during reading, or build vocabulary learned in context into other exercises.

Please check out the full list of titles and guides on our website and let us know what you think! If there’s a piece that you would like to teach soon that does not yet have a guide, drop us an email and we’ll get on it right away.