The verse-style writing in Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story, gives readers continuous opportunities to ask questions about the words that the author artfully chooses. While the text offers valuable information, students are also left to wonder more about what fry bread is and what it means to Native Americans.

Students will enjoy asking questions about this wonderful food representing a deep Native Indian history and a new tradition of sharing fry bread with everyone.

In the award-winning book Fry Bread, author Kevin Maillard tells the important story of a special food and shares factual information about the history, culture, and tradition of Native American lives. In the first several pages of the book, fry bread is referred to as a food by both text and illustration. As the story progresses, students can determine the deeper meaning of fry bread for Native Indians, and find that this is more than just a celebrated dish, it is an important symbol to Native people. Fry Bread ends with an author's note, which provides readers with further, important information on this special Native American food.

Author Kevin Maillard, a member of the Seminole Nation, tells the story of his family's food and history. Through this lens, students can identify Maillard's purpose behind specific wording in the text, Fry Bread: A Native American Story. The author includes his family's recipe for fry bread at the end of the story, allowing students to think further about Maillard's purpose for sharing the deep and long history behind fry bread.

Both text and illustration lend themselves to making connections in Fry Bread by Kevin Maillard. Students can make connections between the story of fry bread and what they have learned about Native Americans in school. Maillard writes in a way that includes the reader in the tradition of fry bread and offers opportunities for students to make text-to-self connections as they read. The story of Fry Bread is sure to inspire connections to other stories, the world around us, and the readers themselves!

This word work lesson plan and set of teaching resources use Fry Bread by Kevin Noble Maillard as a springboard for instruction focused on consonants.

By anchoring word study to the text, students will benefit from seeing how double consonants are used inside the text before engaging in guided and independent practice with consonants.

This set of vocabulary development resources for Fry Bread highlights the words that are most important for students to know and understand while reading the book. Through engaging in fun word games, matching words to definitions and pictures, and practicing how to categorize words, students will develop the vocabulary necessary to comprehend this story and many others.