The Dark Sky Night: read-along
The Dark Sky Night as a read-along for the projector: 15 pages, 2390 words, level 17, beyond grade 8.
Page 1 of 15
Rosa had been warned that the telescope was a bad idea, mostly by herself. She acquired it at the church rummage sale in March for eleven dollars and a jar of her grandmother's plum preserves, which the elderly gentleman selling it considered the more valuable half of the transaction. It was a white aluminum tube as long as her arm, with a dent beside the eyepiece and a mysterious brass screw whose purpose she never managed to identify, and it arrived in a battered cardboard carton that had originally contained a floor lamp. She carried it home through Millbrook with both arms wrapped around it, the way you carry a cat that has not consented to being carried. That evening she assembled it in the backyard, with her father observing skeptically from the kitchen step, and aimed it at the moon, and the moon came rushing down the tube at her, gray and enormous and cratered like the skin of an orange, so magnified and so close that she stumbled backward from the eyepiece and laughed out loud.
Keys: ← → or Page Up and Page Down turn the page, Space starts and pauses the voice, Home and End jump, F fills the screen. Tapping the right side of a page goes on; the left side goes back.
How to use it
- Press Full screen (F) to put the book on the projector.
- Press Read to me (Space), or read it yourself and turn pages with the arrow keys or a tap. Pick the Pace that suits the class.
- After the last page, three questions come up to talk about.
About this book
- Level 17, beyond grade 8
- 15 pages, 2390 words, about 18 minutes aloud
- A story, gentle
Related
About The Dark Sky Night
Rosa's grandmother saw Comet Halloran seventy-one years ago from a cow pasture that is now a floodlit soccer field, and Rosa means to show it to her again. A cardboard hood can't fix an orange sky, so Rosa takes her notebook to the town council and asks for one dark hour, and then a cloud arrives.
Words to preview
- sensitivity (sen-sih-TIV-ih-tee)
- power to sense
- scattered (SKAT-erd)
- bounced every way
- approach (uh-PROHCH)
- coming near
- inclined (in-KLYND)
- willing
- principle (PRIN-suh-pul)
- a fixed belief
Questions that fit any book
- What happened at the beginning, in the middle and at the end?
- Which page was your favorite? Why?
- How did the main character feel at the end? What tells you?
Questions
How long does The Dark Sky Night take to read aloud?
It has 15 pages and 2390 words, so about 18 minutes at the Steady pace and a little less at Quick. If you stop to talk on the way, plan for more.
What reading level is The Dark Sky Night?
Level 17, beyond grade 8. The library numbers its levels from 0 to 18 and puts the level of a book on its cover; levels above 13 are beyond grade 8 and have no grade. A level is a guide for choosing, so look at the pages yourself.
Whose voice is it?
Your browser's own. Read to me uses a speaking voice already on the computer, so it sounds like that computer and works without a sign-in. Voices differ: some light each word as it is spoken, and some do not, in which case the highlight follows a steady pace instead. Some browsers use an online voice; if yours does, the browser, not us, sends the words of the page to its speech service. If no voice is installed, turn the pages and read it aloud yourself.
Do students need an account?
No. Nothing is asked of anyone and nothing is sent to us. Project the page, or share the link and let students open it on their own screens.
Where does this book come from?
It was written for Peabody's library. It is not copied from a published book.
Nothing you do here is sent to us. The voice is your browser's own. No sign-in, no ads.