Explore a powerful Thanksgiving story about a family's journey to a new home with this engaging Rooted in Reading companion for How Many Days to America? by Eve Bunting! This week-long resource helps students understand the historical fiction genre and why characters act the way they do, while strengthening comprehension, vocabulary, and grammar skills.

Over the course of 5 days, students will learn the features of historical fiction, noticing how the characters are fictional while the setting and events are rooted in history. Students will also explore character motivation, thinking about the reasons behind the characters' choices, and use what they learn in a writing response.

Students will also explore the paired nonfiction reader Immigrant Inspiration, extending the learning from the mentor text while building background knowledge through informational reading.

Vocabulary instruction focuses on the words restless, quay, anxious, huddled, gripped, garnets, village, bobbed, shy, bow, scrambled, and clasped, giving students opportunities to develop word knowledge through synonym and antonym games, sentence writing, and vocabulary prompts.

Each day includes a Daily Deep Dive featuring a mentor sentence from the text. Students closely examine the sentence to practice reading, editing, grammar, noticing language choices, and thinking deeply about meaning.

The week's grammar focus is subjects and predicates, with practice identifying each part and building complete sentences.

This resource includes:

• 5 days of detailed lesson plans for comprehension, vocabulary, and grammar
• Comprehension lessons focused on historical fiction and character motivation
• Question cards, Thinking about Reading journal prompts, and digital comprehension posters
• Comprehension focus posters, anchor chart templates, and discussion questions
• Paired reading passages, reading response activities, printables, and assessments
• Paired nonfiction learning with Immigrant Inspiration
• Vocabulary activities and games featuring the week's targeted words
• Daily Deep Dive mentor sentence activities
• Grammar lessons and activities focused on subjects and predicates
• Crafts, writing activities, and engaging text-based response activities