Drums, Girls, & Dangerous Pie

Drums, Girls, & Dangerous Pie Novel Study Guide

Drums, Girls, & Dangerous Pie Novel Study Guide

It’s a new Drums, Girls, & Dangerous Pie Novel Study Guide! This 96 page product includes comprehension questions, vocabulary, writing topics and more!

This week I uploaded my Novel Study Guide for one of my favorite books, Drums, Girls, & Dangerous Pie  by Jordan Sonnenblick.  It came into existence, as with all of my products, from a need.

As the media specialist at my school, I have coordinated several school-wide reads.  My principal asked me to pick a book that would appeal to the kids AND the teachers, and he wanted a  theme about loving and supporting family, especially in times of need.

The Perfect Book

I immediately knew which one it should be. I told him, “That’s Drums, Girls, & Dangerous Pie!”  It is a moving story about a teen named Steven whose younger brother, Jeffrey, is suddenly diagnosed with leukemia. The story is told in first person from Steven’s viewpoint, but it explores the struggle each family member endures as Jeffrey fights his illness.

Because the entire faculty was participating, I designed lessons that all subject area teachers would feel comfortable using.  Comprehension questions with different levels of complexity were a must. My goal was to make sure that even our most advanced students had questions that required brain power.

A Novel Study Guide with Writing Topics

Writing is an important element, so I included writing topics for each chapter.  And because we can’t comprehend if we don’t understand word meanings, I had to include vocabulary.  It’s been my experience that we often assume our students know more words than they actually do.  I didn’t want students to miss out on comprehension just because they didn’t have the vocabulary needed to understand the text. This novel study guide covers 145 words by the end of the book!

I added Word Wall printouts to make it easy for teachers to post words with every chapter, and I created three graphic organizers.

If you are interested in using Drums, Girls, & Dangerous Pie, you won’t regret it!  It’s an amazing story, with or without my novel guide.  However, with discussion questions, writing topics, vocabulary and more, your students will cover this book more thoroughly than they would by simply reading it.

Visit TPT for a preview!

Happy Teaching!