In Knots on a Counting Rope, the author intentionally holds back the fact that the boy is blind. This intentional omission will engage readers, encouraging them to look for clues in the text and illustrations to make inferences about the story.

This lesson plan is an extraordinary resource for supporting a lesson on identifying broader messages within a story. The author of Knots on a Counting Rope presents complex messages about the passage of time, the ability to overcome a disability, and the importance of family and traditions.

Knots on a Counting Rope is the perfect anchor text for a mini-lesson focused on making inferences. Use this lesson plan and set of resources to show students how to use clues in the text to better understand character relationships and key details in the text.

Using Knots on a Counting Rope as an anchor text, readers will learn how to comprehend a text that incorporates more than one-character perspective. The story is told from both the boy's perspective and the grandfather's perspective. This book also relies heavily on its illustrations to enhance its meaning, and it introduces students to the purpose of the ellipsis (...) in text.

Knots on a Counting Rope is a uniquely perfect text to support readers as they learn to visualize while reading. The main character in the book is blind and, therefore, relies on his grandfather's descriptive language to understand the world in which he lives. As they read through this story, students can use the grandfather's descriptions to create their own mental images.

This word work lesson plan and set of teaching resources use Knots on a Counting Rope by Bill Martin Jr. as a springboard for instruction focused on parts of speech.

By anchoring word study to the text, students will benefit from seeing how adjectives and adverbs are used inside of the text before engaging in both guided and independent practice with parts of speech.

This set of vocabulary development resources for Knots on a Counting Rope 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.

Use this Common Core aligned comprehension assessment to evaluate students' comprehension of Knots on a Counting Rope.

Use this Running Record to assess oral reading fluency with Knots on a Counting Rope. Track meaning, structure, and visual accuracy using the first 100 words of the text to determine whether or not this book is a good fit for the readers in your classroom.

Read Knots on a Counting Rope then have some fun matching cause and effect sentences from the book. By using these cause and effect cards, students will demonstrate both their comprehension of the text and their understanding of cause and effect relationships in hands-on and interactive way.

This resource includes matching/sorting cards and a sorting mat for four cause and effect sentences in Knots on a Counting Rope. Each cause card is marked with a square and each effect card is marked with a circle, making it easy to support students who struggle with matching cause and effect relationships.

Understanding cause and effect is a key comprehension and language skill. The text structure of Knots on a Counting Rope includes several examples of cause and effect relationships, making it easy to use as a springboard for modeling or independent practice.

This simple resource includes four sentence stems. Each sentence stem presents an effect. Students will use what they know about the book to fill in the cause of the effect.

The BookPagez extension activities are a great way to push student engagement beyond the pages of the text. Try using this activity with early finishers, with students who show a deeper connection with the text, or as a center activity.