The Night of the Twisters by Ivy Ruckman

Ruckman, Ivy(Author). Night of the Twisters [NIGHT OF THE TWISTERS]. New York: HarperTrophy, 1986. Print.

The Night of the Twisters by Ivy Ruckman is a story about a Boy named Dan who gets stuck in a tornado with his best friend, Arthur, and his little brother, Ryan. The boys are all alone in the house when the tornado strikes and they must fend for themselves as they try to get through the storm. This book is based on an actual tornado in Nebraska during 1980. Even though these  boys are quite young, Dan is able to gain great courage in order to help his friend and brother in a time of great distress and his mother is not around. This book is great for historical, sceintific events that have occured and also provides a great story line involving the main character, Dan.

Resources:

http://www.gitwisters.com/twentyyears/twistersbook.php

This site provides the teacher an dstudents with even more information on the actual night of the twisters. There are stories about the real event, times after, how people dealt with the tornados, facts about tornados and much more. This information can be very useful when teaching this book so that students can relate what they have read in story and the actual events.

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/weather/tornado/

This a site where students can go and learn more about tornadoes. They are able to learn very interesting facts about tornadoes such as speed, duration, classification, vocabulary and more. There are activities that the teacher can provide for the students to participate in during class as well. Students can also learn about Tornado Valley and where is it located and why it is so significant.

Vocabulary:
tornado, cyclone, twister, eye, forecast

During Reading:
Students can take note and keep track of the character traits of the main characters in the novel and how they change throughout the book. Students can discuss why the believe each characters fits into different characters traits and whether they consider these to be good or bad character traits of a person.

Writing Activity:
Students can expand on their discussions of character traits. They can first write about how a certain character or multiple characters could be described as at the beginning of the novel. Then, they can write about how the characters either changed or remained the same by the end of the novel. The students can write about how a certain character's change was important to the storyline.