Educators' Guides for Benny and Penny in Lights Out!
HARDCOVER ISBN 13: 978-1-935179-20-7
LEXILE LEVEL: GN 170
GUIDED READING LEVEL: H
LEXILE LEVEL: GN 170
GUIDED READING LEVEL: H
Common Core Guide:
KEY IDEAS AND DETAILS |
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What kind of animals are Benny and Penny? What time is it in the story? How are Benny and Penny related to each other? What is their relationship like? What are Benny and Penny supposed to be doing in this story? What do they do instead? | RL.1.1, RL.2.1 |
Ask students to retell the events in this story, focusing on the moments when either Benny or Penny is scared. What frightened them? What made them feel better? | RL.1.2, RL.2.2 |
Ask students to list the differences between Benny and Penny’s bedroom (inside) and their yard (outside). List colors and objects that are found in each place. | RL.1.3, RL.2.3 |
CRAFT AND STRUCTURE |
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What does Benny mean when he says “But I don’t feel quiet” on page 10? On page 17, why does Penny think to herself “The Boogey Mouse is not really real. It’s just a story!” Direct students to look at the sound effects – the words that appear outside the balloon. What do these words tell us? | RL.1.4, RL.2.4 |
What sort of stories does Penny want to read? Can you think of any other books in the classroom that are about princesses? What sort of books does Benny want to read? What books in the classroom are about dinosaurs? Ask students what they learn from looking just at the first three pages of this story. | RL.1.5, RL.2.5 |
Show students the difference between speech balloons and thought balloons. On p. 27, who is saying “Benny, Penny, did you brush your teeth?” Have students guess why this balloon is spiky rather than round. | RL.1.6, RL.2.6 |
INTEGRATION OF KNOWLEDGE AND IDEAS |
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Look at pages 24-26. What happens to Benny and Penny over these three pages, and how do their feelings change from page 24 to page 26? Why do they change? Ask students to come up with other examples from the text where Benny and Penny changed their feelings in reaction to an event. | RL.1.7, RL.2.7 |
Share other Benny and Penny TOON Books with students. What are each of the siblings’ chief characteristics? Have students read the story of Hansel and Gretel. Can they find any similarities between the two stories? What other stories about siblings can they think of? | RL.1.9, RL.2.9 |
SPEAKING AND LISTENING / WRITING |
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Split students into groups of three and have them each read the book aloud. Assign one student to read Benny, one to Penny and one to read sound effects and the mother’s lines. Then have them switch. Ask students in their small groups to share which moments in the story they found scary, exciting, or happy. | SL.1.1, SL.1.2, SL.2.1, SL.2.2 |
Ask students to write a short narrative describing a night when they wanted to stay up late. Have students exchange their narratives and comment on each others’ work. Allow them the opportunity to revise their work afterwards. | W.1.3, W.1.5, W.1.8, W.2.3, W.2.5, W.2.8 |
Lesson Plan:
Before Reading | 1. Ask students: what makes a comic book different from a picture book? Is it the
presence of panels? Is it the speech bubbles? 2. Use pages 9 and 10 to preview the book. Talk about how comics often use panels to show things step-by-step. Starting with the middle panels, we get what is almost a tiny story: Benny is thirsty. He drinks, then burps. As we turn the page, the burp story continues. Notice how the size of the word “BURP” gets bigger and bigger. What does that indicate? |
During Reading | 1. Even though comic books give us a lot of pictures to go along with the text, we
still have to use our imaginations. Look at page 5. Describe what you see in the
picture. Now describe what you think Benny is looking at beyond the left border of
the picture. What do you think is in the house? Who is speaking? We usually think
of pictures as helping us imagine what the words are describing, but in this book, the
words do a lot to help us “read” the pictures. On this page, the speech bubble helps us
imagine things that are not in the picture. 2. Use page 7 of the book to discuss the different ways a comic has of presenting information. A lot of times, comics have panels with borders around them, but sometimes they don’t. At the top of the page, how do we know there aren’t magically two Bennys? Discuss how the thought bubbles help us to interpret the picture. 3. Benny and Penny imagine a lot of things in this story. Look at page 12 and 13. How do we know that the princess and dragon aren’t actually in the room? What visual cues indicate that the princess and dragon are in Benny and Penny’s imaginations? What verbal cues help us? If we didn’t have the speech bubbles, would we still be able to make a guess about what is going on? Can you think of other ways to show that something is in a character’s imagination, not actually in the room? On page 24, the dinosaur looks like it is in a bubble. Sometimes a character’s imagination is shown in a thought bubble. |
After Reading | Make a comic showing your character imagining something. Use one of the methods
from this book (a thought bubble or a difference in the way the imagined object/event
is drawn). |
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