CHAPTER BOOK READING GUIDE
PREVIEW
GUIDED ANTI-BIAS/ANTI-RACIST READING | GRADES 2-5
WELCOME
This is a reading guide designed to accompany Sharon Draper’s chapter book picture book The Buried Bones Mystery. We recommend that grownups read the focus book and the reading guide content before reading with young readers. This guide will help you prepare your own questions for your young readers and choose vocabulary, history, and other related topics to integrate into your learning and discussion.
Lesson content was written by Zapoura Newton-Calvert and was designed to start or deepen anti-racist and anti-bias conversations in families and other learning communities.
HOW WE DESIGN OUR READING GUIDES
This guided reading lesson is designed to be part of a larger life-long commitment to anti-racist reading and learning for the student and the facilitator. Reading Is Resistance sees reading as an opportunity to seed deeper conversations and opportunities for action around racial equity in our communities. We hold the belief that being anti-racist is a process of learning (and unlearning) over time.
The Learning for Justice Social Justice Standards (focused on Identity, Diversity, Justice, and Action) serve as guides for our work.
SECTION ONE: CH 1-5
SUMMARY
It is the summer before 6th grade, and Rico, Ziggy, Jerome, and Rashawn come together for adventure. After the local basketball court gets vandalized, the kids build a clubhouse in Ziggy’s backyard and collect treasures to keep as part of the Black Dinosaurs Club . When they dig a hole to bury their treasure box, they get a surprise that leads them to uncover a mystery. And figuring out the mystery together teaches them more about the history of the land they’re on and about themselves.
SAMPLE DISCUSSION QUESTION
Rico, Ziggy, Jerome, and Rashawn are described in great detail at the beginning of the book. Each of them has their own identities, home space, and family. Make a list of the ways that the boys are similar. Make a list of the ways that the kids are different. IDENTITY.3-5.5
SECTION TWO: CH 6-11
SUMMARY
The friends have a real mystery on their hands. What kind of bones did they find buried in Ziggy’s backyard? Why are they buried there? Through research and a late night stakeout of Ziggy’s backyard, the boys find out there’s so much more to what’s over the fence and the preservation of Black history in their neighborhood.
SAMPLE DISCUSSION QUESTION
How do the Black Dinosaurs go about investigating their mystery? What resources do they turn to? How might people be resources in a similar way to books? DIVERSITY.3-5.9
WHAT’S NEXT?
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES & LEARNING IDEAS
Included in Reading Guide PDF.
READ NEXT
The Case of the Firecrackers by Laurence Yep
Lost in the Tunnel of Time (Clubhouse Mysteries Series Book #2) by Sharon Draper
The Harlem Charade by Natasha Tarpley
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