CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.3

Grandpa, Chaz, and Me It was a few months before my brother was born. My grandpa was perfectly fine, but then he went to the doctor for a checkup. The doctors found something wrong. They said they had to run some tests. Then they said he had colon cancer. The doctors wanted to run more tests, so Grandpa had to stay in the hospital for a while. After he got home, I played with him. He would always play with me and do all sorts of stuff. I loved my grandpa. I liked to hear him play his harmonica. He even tried to teach me how to play it. Then he had to go back to the hospital for surgery.

The Day I Took the Spotlight Wouldn’t it be superb to have one moment when you took the spotlight, to have everybody clapping for you and cheering loudly? I have had that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—the day I took the spotlight! Sometime in February, my teacher told us all about the Woodmen of America speech contest. The topic was “people who have overcome obstacles in their lives.” I thought my great-grandma Lorraine Parsley, who has had recurring cancer 13 times and is still living, would be perfect.

Indy’s Life Story I am going to tell you about my dog and how I got him. I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but at some point my parents asked if I wanted to have a dog. I, of course, said yes. We couldn’t decide what kind of dog to get at first, but at last we found a great breed, the Shetland sheepdog. We called a good breeder. I was so excited about getting a dog! Before I knew it, I was on my way to the breeder. I went inside and saw dogs everywhere. It was so hard to pick which one to get. I saw one I liked. It was a small blue merle.

A Story of Survival “Brian Robeson was stopped and stricken with a white flash of horror, a terror so intense that his breathing, his thinking, and his heart had nearly stopped.” This quote from the book Hatchet by Gary Paulsen shows why this book was too good to put down. Brian Robeson, an eleven-year-old boy, left his home in New York to go to Canada to see his father. He was on a plane (a two-person plane) in the middle of the Canadian forest when the pilot had a heart attack. Brian was stranded in the air with no real knowledge of how to fly a plane.