Pa gets snake bit, Fodder-wing is sick, and Jody gets a fawn...

My students are not going to finish the book - we are too close to the end of the school year.  It is my hope that they have read enough to provoke their curiosity and, hopefully, may choose to finish over the summer.

My students have embraced the "reader's theater" approach to reading aloud.  Even the most reluctant readers are involved.  Today, I overheard one student updating another student about the parts he missed.  The most wonderful thing is - this student, the one telling the other one, has been a borderline student all year.  He doesn't volunteer to read aloud and turns in work which is mediocre at best.  HE was actually informing the other student, and doing so accurately.  This was a huge success!  I was SO proud!!

We are less than 200 pages into the book - chapters 16-18.  Pa and Jody went hunting for their hogs, whcih have mysteriously disappeared, and Pa was bitten by a rattlesnake.  In order to draw out the poison, a deer was killed for its kidney (I believe it was a kidney). This action resulted in the does baby being parentless - a young fawn.  Interesting side note, the female deer, the doe, is spelled the same way as does (meaning to do something).  The students have struggled with reading this new word in text.

Anyway,  Jody is sent to the Forresters to get Doc Wilson.  Doc comes to help along with Mill-wheel Forrester and Buck Forrester.  Mill-wheel returns home the next day alond with Doc but Buck stays back to help out the Baxters while Pa is sick and recivering from the snake bite.  Jody has gone and retrieved the fawn and claimed him for his pet.  Buck teaches Jody about the responsibilities of surviving in the scrub.  They hunt for meat and stalk wild critters who come in the night and eat their crops.  Buck and Jody go to the "bee-tree" to gather honey, reaping the largest harvest of honey Buck has ever seen.  All of this leads to a bear attack on the Baxter homestead.  The bear is evidently attracted to the the newly acquired honey loot.  Life is getting exciting in the scrub!!

I am anxious to make a trip to Cross Creek tomorrow - to see M. K . Rawlings homesite, the origin of The Yearling...