CONTENTS
Mystery
“The Case of the Filched
Feast Funds” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
illustrated by Jimmy Holder
Build Fluency
• Read with appropriate intonation.
• Use an appropriate pace while reading.
Build Vocabulary
• Read, write, and learn the meanings of new words.
Review Vocabulary
• Read theme vocabulary words in a different context.
Magazine
Article
“Why Do Cliff Swallows Live
Together?” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
by Jack Myers
Monitor Comprehension: Reread
• Review how to monitor comprehension by rereading
parts of a text.
Summarize
• Review how to summarize the main points of a text.
254
254
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r
The a t e
’
s
r
e
Re a d
TERY
MYS
Co m p r e h e n s i o n S t r a t e g i e s
M AGAZI N E ART I CLE
255
255
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concede
confidential
justification
unearthed
alibi
culprit
confront
scandal
sheepishly
vying
Reading for Fluency
When reading a script aloud,
• Change your tone of voice,
or intonation, to show the
characters’ feelings.
• Use a pace that is smooth
and consistent.
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illus
trate
d by
Jimm
y Ho
lder
CHARACTERS
Narrator
Mrs. Holt, school newspaper advisor
Chorus
Arthur, student reporter
Mr. Ford, school custodian
Lian, student reporter
Zach, student reporter
Alisa, editor in chief of school newspaper
Sergeant Malone, school security officer
Vice-Principal Waters
Narrator: Every Monday morning before
school, the newspaper staff holds its
weekly meeting with their advisor, Mrs.
Holt. They are discussing the content and
layout of the paper’s next edition.
Mrs. Holt: Good morning, students.
Because of the Thanksgiving holiday,
this week’s edition will be released on
Wednesday instead of Friday. So let’s get
right down to business. Who has a strong
story idea for page one?
Chorus: I do! I do!
Mrs. Holt: Let me rephrase that. Does
anyone have a story idea that can be
completed by tomorrow?
Arthur: I do!
Mrs. Holt: OK, Arthur. Tell us what
you’ve got.
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Flue ncy Tip
Arthur probably sounds
paranoid when he says,
“No way! I don’t want to
be infected with copper
funnel syndrome.” Adjust
your intonation by using
a high pitch for this line.
Arthur: I saw a television show over the
weekend that said homework can give
you a disease of the wrists called copper
funnel syndrome!
Mrs. Holt: Do you mean carpal tunnel
syndrome, Arthur?
Arthur: That’s it!
Chorus: What’s carpal tunnel syndrome,
Mrs. Holt?
Mrs. Holt: It’s swelling and pain of the
wrists, caused by too much typing or other
similar movements. You’d have to type
that story, wouldn’t you Arthur?
Arthur: No way! I don’t want to be
infected with copper funnel syndrome.
Narrator: Mr. Ford, the school custodian,
knocks on the door and interrupts Arthur’s
campaign for the front-page story.
Mr. Ford: Sorry to barge in like this, Mrs.
Holt, but Principal Barra has asked me to
make an announcement to all the classes.
Mrs. Holt: Please go ahead, Mr. Ford.
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Narrator: Mrs. Holt waits while Mr. Ford
stands silently, scratching his head.
Mrs. Holt: Mr. Ford . . . the
announcement?
Mr. Ford: Right! As you all know, the
school has been raising money to buy
supplies for a Thanksgiving feast for the
local homeless shelter. Well, all the money
the school had raised was sitting in a big
jar in Principal Barra’s office. With the
money from yesterday’s teacher/student
basketball game—do you remember the
final shot when Jerome slam-dunked the
ball over Mr. Finney’s head?
Mrs. Holt: What about the money?
Mr. Ford: Well, we had finally collected
enough money to buy all the food for the
feast, and now the money is gone!
Mrs. Holt: Gone? How could the money
be gone?
Mr. Ford: I don’t know. Principal Barra
said the jar was here last night. But this
morning, it was missing. She wanted me
to spread the word in case anyone knows
something about it.
Narrator: No one says anything. The
students sit silently and look at each
other.
Mrs. Holt: Thank you, Mr. Ford. I guess
we’ll all be on the lookout for that jar.
Narrator: Mr. Ford walks out of the
room.
Mrs. Holt: How awful! I hope the jar is
found in time for Thanksgiving . . . .
I guess we’d better get back to our
next edition. Arthur, your story idea is
interesting, but you need to do some
research and get your facts straight. Does
anyone else have an idea?
Lian: Me! I have an idea that’s a real
scoop.
Zach: So do I!
Mrs. Holt: Since neither of you seems
willing to concede, why don’t you
both pitch your ideas? Convince your
colleagues to give you the assignment.
Zach: I, um, can’t.
Lian: I can’t either.
Mrs. Holt: Why not?
Zach: It’s confidential. My story idea
is top secret! If I reveal it, I could
compromise the whole investigation . . .
er . . . the whole story.
Mrs. Holt: And you, Lian? What’s your
justification?
Lian: Um. What Zach said.
Mrs. Holt: Let me get this straight. You
both have stories to write, but you won’t
tell us what they are?
Lian and Zach: Yes, ma’am.
Mrs. Holt: This makes no sense to me,
but I guess we need to leave it up to the
editor in chief. What do you think, Alisa?
Which of these two should get the lead
story?
Alisa: How about a competition?
Whoever brings me the best story by
tomorrow gets the front page.
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Narrator: The bell rings and the students
get up and leave the classroom. Zach and
Lian glance at each other suspiciously as
they head off to their lockers. Later that
day during lunch, Lian and Zach are both
lurking in the shadows in the school’s
boiler room. Lian sees a shape across the
room and yells.
Lian: Hey! What are you doing here?
Zach: Me? I’m here for my story! What
are you doing here?
Lian: I’m here to get my story. I’m going
to solve the missing money mystery and
write about it for the front page.
Zach: No way! That’s what I’m going
to do.
Lian: Fine! We’ll see who solves the
mystery first.
Zach: Fine!
Narrator: The reporters turn their backs
on each other and begin to walk away.
Then Lian stops and turns toward Zach.
Lian: Wait a minute. How will it look
when we both file the same story?
Flue ncy Tip
Your pace should sound
natural and conversational.
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Zach: It’ll look like one of us filed a
better one than the other. I’ll tell you
what—you can proofread what I write,
if you like.
Lian: No way! I’m not losing the frontpage story. I guess we could write it
together.
Zach: I suppose. It would be easier to
collect clues if we’re working together. I
was just looking around down here to see
what I could find. So far nothing looks
out of the ordinary.
Lian: Did you check the trash can?
Maybe there are clues in there.
Narrator: Both reporters peek inside the
garbage can and start pulling out papers.
Zach finds something that surprises him.
Zach: Look! It’s a receipt for an airline
ticket to the Bahamas—for Mr. Ford! And
here’s the label from the fund-raising jar!
Lian: Well, that finally settles it. He’s
guilty! Mr. Ford took the money and is
running away to the Bahamas.
Zach: We’ve solved the mystery!
Narrator: Mr. Ford quietly approaches
Lian and Zach. They do not know he is
there until he speaks.
Mr. Ford: You’ve solved the what?
Zach and Lian: Eeek!
Narrator: Zach and Lian hurry away
without answering Mr. Ford’s question.
They head for the main office. There they
find the school’s security officer, Sergeant
Malone, and tell him about what they
have unearthed.
Zach: . . . and that, Sergeant Malone, is
how we found the clues.
Sgt. Malone: And you say you found
these both in the boiler room?
Lian: Yes. No one but Mr. Ford ever goes
down there. It’s so far away from all the
classrooms.
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Sgt. Malone: You two have come up
with a very convincing story.
Zach: We could never have solved the
mystery individually. It took teamwork.
Lian: Do you think we have enough
clues to publish the story?
Sgt. Malone: I said it’s convincing, but
it’s not flawless. Mr. Ford left with me
last night. I gave him a ride home. I also
drove him to the school this morning.
Lian: So he has an alibi.
Zach: But the ticket!
Sgt. Malone: Oh, he’s been talking
about that vacation for months. It
seeped into every conversation we had.
If you look closely at the receipt, you’ll
probably see he bought the ticket long
before the money went missing.
Lian: So we’re back where we started.
Sgt. Malone: You two need to be
careful about jumping to conclusions.
Zach: You’re right. We’ll have to do
more detective work to find the culprit.
Lian: Let’s go back to the boiler room.
The person who left the jar’s label in
the trash might come back. We can
intercept them when they do. Then
we’ll get our answers.
Sgt. Malone: Be careful, you two. You
don’t know the extent of this matter.
Make sure your findings are accurate
and based on facts you can rely on
before you publish a false story and the
school goes haywire.
Flue ncy Tip
Practice reading your
lines with different
tones of voice. Ask a
partner to tell you which
intonation best shows
the character’s feelings
and personality.
Lian and Zach: Thank you for your
help, sir.
Narrator: Lian and Zach walk out of
the main office and pause to talk again.
Lian: It’s a good thing that we came to
Sergeant Malone before we wrote that
story.
Zach: It sure is. If he hadn’t rejected
our findings, we would’ve been in
serious trouble.
Lian: Okay, let’s think about this. Who
could have taken that money?
Zach: Whoever it was has access to the
school and its assets. So it’s probably
an inside job.
Narrator: A bell rings, signaling the
end of a class period. Students begin to
fill the hallways.
Lian: Let’s make the boiler room our
rendezvous point after our next class.
Maybe we’ll get some answers then.
Narrator: Later that day, Lian and Zach
are on the sinuous staircase leading
down to the boiler room. They stop
when they hear voices.
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Vice-Principal Waters: So they know
that the money is missing?
Mr. Ford: Yes, but no one knows that it
was you.
Narrator: Lian and Zach begin
whispering to each other.
Zach: Is that Vice-Principal Waters?
Lian: It is! She’s with Mr. Ford! How do
you think we should handle this? Should
we confront them?
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Zach: We have to. We’ve caught them redhanded. They might be gone if we go back
for Sergeant Malone.
Narrator: Lian walks down the remaining
stairs, with Zach following close behind.
Vice-Principal Waters is speaking with
Mr. Ford.
Zach: Lian, I think we’ve just solved the
mystery of the missing Thanksgiving fund.
Lian: That’s right! And we’re going to
write an article in the school paper about
this scandal.
Zach: We have it all figured out.
Vice-Principal Waters: You do?
Lian: Oh, yes! We know that you took the
charity money and are using it to . . .
Narrator: Lian and Zach look around the
packed room. They slowly realize that
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Flue ncy Tip
Think about the pace
Vice-Principal Waters
would use to explain
what happened. She
would probably speak
slowly to prove her
innocence.
Vice-Principal Waters is standing among
boxes full of food. Lian finishes her
sentence slowly.
Lian: . . . buy the food for the shelter’s
dinner.
Vice-Principal Waters: Yes, I suppose
you have caught me. The shelter called
early this morning to say they needed the
food right away to start preparations for
Thursday’s meal.
Narrator: Zach and Lian look sheepishly
at the ground.
Vice-Principal Waters: No one else had
arrived at school yet. So I took the money
jar and rushed to the store to buy food.
Then I came to see if Mr. Ford could help
me, but I couldn’t find him. I’m sorry you
two don’t have a juicy scandal to
report on.
Lian: I think this is going to make a much
more upbeat story, ma’am.
❖
Narrator: On Tuesday, the newsroom
staff meets again in Mrs. Holt’s
classroom.
Mrs. Holt: Welcome back, everybody.
It’s time to discuss the layout for
tomorrow’s paper. Do we have something
for the front page?
Arthur: My story on copper funnel—
I mean, carpal tunnel—syndrome is
finished. I just need someone to type it.
Alisa: Ahem . . . we’re running a story
on the missing charity money and the
Thanksgiving feast at the shelter.
Mrs. Holt: Zach and Lian were both
vying for the front-page story. I’m
curious—how did you decide who got it?
Alisa: The honor goes to the reporter
who wrote the best story!
Chorus: But you both wrote the story.
Lian and Zach: Precisely!
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Lesson 10
Reading Nonfiction
Bridge to Reading for Information Magazine articles
are a kind of nonfiction writing. They present facts and
information about a topic. The author uses evidence to
support ideas in the text. The notes on page 267 point out
characteristics of magazine articles. How can features such
as these help you find information in magazine articles?
Review the Focus Strategies
You can also use the comprehension strategies you learned
about in this theme to help you read magazine articles.
Monitor Comprehension: Reread
It is important to monitor your own comprehension as
you read. If you come to part of the text that you don’t
understand, stop and identify the part that is unclear. Then
reread the word, sentence, or paragraph.
Summarize
When you summarize, you tell the most important ideas
in your own words. Using this strategy will help you make
sure that you understand what you read. It will also help you
remember information. Pause several times while you read
to summarize the ideas in one or two sentences.
As you read “Why Do Cliff Swallows Live Together?” on
pages 268–271, think about where and how you can use
the strategies.
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HEADINGS
Headings give clues about what you will
read in each section.
Why Do
BY
JACK MYERS
live together?
Cliff-Swallow Experts
Cliff-Swallow Nests
Most of the birds we see build their nests in lonely, hardto-find places. Most birdsongs are really bird language that
says: “Stay away. This place is mine.” So there’s a surprise
in thinking about cliff swallows because they nest close
together.
Cliff swallows get part of their name from a habit of
attaching their mud nests to the faces of rock cliffs. They
have found that many man-made sites are even better
than rock cliffs—wooden barns, stucco houses, and (best
of all) highway bridges. Even with all the room at those
nesting sites, they choose to build their nests so close
together that they form bird cities, or colonies. Some of
these colonies have thousands of nests.
Dr. Charles Browne and his wife, Mary, have found cliff swallows
so interesting that they have been studying them for more
than 22 years. They and their students have a great study site
in southern Nebraska, with more than 150 colonies that vary in
size from 2 nests to 6,000 nests. The research has centered on a
question that Dr. Brown puts very simply: “Why do cliff swallows
live in colonies?”
Answering that question has taken a lot of work that is still
going on. The scientists use ladders to get up close to the nests.
Then they look inside, using flashlights and little mirrors like the
ones dentists use to look at your teeth. They put leg bands on the
adult birds for identification, and they use marker pens to keep
track of nestlings. So they have learned a bookful of information
about the private lives of cliff swallows through the stages of
mating, nest building, egg laying, and bringing up nestlings.
A key to why these birds live in colonies has to do with their
food. Cliff swallows make their living by catching flying insects,
especially tiny insects like mosquitoes that often fly close together
in swarms. So an important part of hunting for food is to find an
insect swarm. Some swarms can be as far as a mile from the nest.
C LIFF
SWALLOWS BUILD THEIR CLAY NESTS CLOSE TOGETHER
ON THE FACE OF A CLIFF .
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FACTS
Details about the topic support the main
idea of the text.
CAPTIONS
Captions explain the photographs and
provide additional information about
the topic.
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Apply the Strategies Read this magazine article about the interesting
habits of cliff swallows. As you read, use different comprehension
strategies, such as summarizing, to help you understand.
Why Do
BY
JACK MYERS
Cliff-Swallow Nests
Most of the birds we see build their nests in lonely, hardto-find places. Most birdsongs are really bird language that
says: “Stay away. This place is mine.” So there’s a surprise
in thinking about cliff swallows because they nest close
together.
Cliff swallows get part of their name from a habit of
attaching their mud nests to the faces of rock cliffs. They
have found that many man-made sites are even better
than rock cliffs—wooden barns, stucco houses, and (best
of all) highway bridges. Even with all the room at those
nesting sites, they choose to build their nests so close
together that they form bird cities, or colonies. Some of
these colonies have thousands of nests.
268
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d
Stop an Think
How are cliff swallows different from other birds? MONITOR
COMPREHENSION: REREAD
live together?
Cliff-Swallow Experts
Dr. Charles Browne and his wife, Mary, have found cliff swallows
so interesting that they have been studying them for more
than 22 years. They and their students have a great study site
in southern Nebraska, with more than 150 colonies that vary in
size from 2 nests to 6,000 nests. The research has centered on a
question that Dr. Brown puts very simply: “Why do cliff swallows
live in colonies?”
Answering that question has taken a lot of work that is still
going on. The scientists use ladders to get up close to the nests.
Then they look inside, using flashlights and little mirrors like the
ones dentists use to look at your teeth. They put leg bands on the
adult birds for identification, and they use marker pens to keep
track of nestlings. So they have learned a bookful of information
about the private lives of cliff swallows through the stages of
mating, nest building, egg laying, and bringing up nestlings.
A key to why these birds live in colonies has to do with their
food. Cliff swallows make their living by catching flying insects,
especially tiny insects like mosquitoes that often fly close together
in swarms. So an important part of hunting for food is to find an
insect swarm. Some swarms can be as far as a mile from the nest.
C LIFF
SWALLOWS BUILD THEIR CLAY NESTS CLOSE TOGETHER
ON THE FACE OF A CLIFF .
269
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d
Stop an Think
Summarize the advantages and disadvantages of colony living
for cliff swallows. SUMMARIZE
Once eggs have hatched
in late spring, bringing food
for the usual three or four
nestlings is almost more than a fulltime job for the parents. By watching
individual birds, scientists found that
most parents were making a hunting
trip and food delivery about once
every four minutes most of the day.
A parent may have a hard time
finding that much food. To do it, birds
watch their neighbors. The scientists
noticed that a bird that came home
from a hunting trip without finding
food seemed to know what to do. It
watched neighbors to see who had
been successful. Then it followed the
lucky neighbor on its next flight. In
larger colonies it is even easier because
there is usually a steady stream of
birds watching others and finding their
way to the best hunting site. Thinking
of the big advantage the swallows
get by living close together, Dr. Brown
called the colony an information
center because it allows birds to pool
information to help everyone.
Blood-Sucking Bugs
The Browns also found some disadvantages of colony living. Cliff swallows
have a problem with a blood-sucking
parasite called a swallow bug. It has
no wings, but travels by clinging to
the feet of adult swallows. It has long
needle-like mouth parts and uses them
to take blood from tender nestlings.
Scientists studied the effect of the
swallow bugs by counting them—
sometimes as many as 2,000 in a nest.
Then they weighed the nestlings. Nests
with the most bugs had the smallest
nestlings. Some of the babies were so
puny they would not survive their loss
of blood to the parasites.
One other important result came
out when the scientists checked their
records. Close-packed colonies with the
most nests also had the most bugs per
nest. So the effects of parasites give a
disadvantage to colony living but not
enough to outweigh the advantages.
By showing these (and other)
advantages and disadvantages of
nesting close together, the Browns
make it understandable why cliff
swallows choose colonies of different
sizes for their nests. Each time a
bird picks a nest site, it must choose
between a big colony (with lots of
information but lots of swallow bugs)
or a small colony (with fewer bugs but
less information). Not all birds make
the same choice.
It even looks as if a bird’s choice
of where to live is inherited from its
parents. Each bird prefers to nest in a
colony that’s about the same size as its
birth colony.
Most importantly, Dr. Brown has
shown that most cliff swallows nest
close together because of the big
advantage of the colony as an information center that helps everyone.
270
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L IVING
CLOSE TOGETHER HAS
GOOD POINTS AND BAD POINTS .
T HE
BIRDS SHARE INFORMATION
AND HARMFUL PARASITES .
271
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