5. Text Evidence Acceleration

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2 Nsɛmmisa

Marly watches as sap, a thick liquid that comes from maple trees, is boiled to make maple syrup.

Excerpt from Miracles on Maple Hill

by Virginia Sorensen

1 Marly stood by the side of the huge pans. You could look forever and forever into the bubbling, deeper and deeper, but your looking was always coming up again. She tried watching one bubble, all by itself, but she couldn’t. It was gone, and another one was in its place too quickly. It was like ten thousand pots of taffy boiling all at once. The sap in the pans at the back looked like water, just as it did in the buckets on the trees, but each pan nearer the front was more and more golden, because each one was closer to being real syrup. Mr. Chris said he had to boil away forty gallons of sap to make one little gallon of syrup.

2 “How many gallons will one tree give?” Daddy asked, and Marly knew why he wanted to know. On Maple Hill there were about fifty maple trees. She could practically see Daddy’s arithmetic getting ready to start working.

3 “An average tree will give twenty gallons in a season,” Mr. Chris said. “That’s usually a half gallon of syrup. Some seasons sap seems to be sweeter to start with, and it won’t take so much. But there are trees—” Mr. Chris leaned forward as if he were telling a wonderful secret. “I’ve got one old tree, up by the pasture fence, that we hang six buckets on. That tree is five feet through, and I’ve known it to give us over two hundred and forty gallons of sap in one season.” He looked proud about what that old tree could do, Marly thought. “I figure it must be over two hundred years old now,” he said, and laughed. “But for a maple tree, that’s young yet. Plenty of sap left for another hundred years. . . .”

4 Mr. Chris opened the stove doors again and began shoving in more logs. . . .

5 “When that tree dies,” Mr. Chris said, “it’ll provide logs for another whole season of sugaring. Now that’s being of some use in the world, isn’t it? If a man could be as useful as that!” He kicked the doors shut again with his big boot.

What is a common theme shared by "Excerpt from Miracles on Maple Hill" and "Excerpt from Little House in the Big Woods"? How is this theme developed differently in each story? Use details from both stories to support your response.

In your response, be sure to

- identify a theme shared by both stories.

- explain how this theme is developed differently in each story.

- use details from both stories to support your response.

A common theme shared by "Excerpt from Miracles on Maple Hill" and "Excerpt from Little House in the Big Woods" is that you can learn many things listening to your elders. In both stories we have young kids listening to someone older explain the facts about and steps to take so you can make maple tree sap into something good to eat.The stories are different, and the authors of each excerpt are telling us different things about maple syrup or maple sugar and how to make both of them. In "Excerpt from Miracles on Maple Hill" Marly and her father are learning facts about maple syrup from their neighbor Mr. Chris, but in "Excerpt from Little House in the Big Woods" Laura and Mary are learning about what there grandpa does to make maple sugar in the woods.

First in "Excerpt from Little House in the Big Woods" we hear Pa tell the story of all the steps grandpa has to go through so Laura and Mary can eat their maple sugar candy. Pa begins his story telling us how Grandpa prepares the equipment he will need to gather the maple syrup. The text says, . This helps us understand that there is more to making maple sugar than just boiling the sap, you need to be ready with the tools you need to gather the sap first. When the time comes for the sap to begin moving through the trees Grandpa has to prepare the trees by making a hole and attaching the trough to the tree with the bucket underneath collecting the sap. Then he has to go get the sap. The text says, . The next steps in the process need to be watched carefully to make sure nothing goes wrong. . . As we can learn from the story Pa is telling there are many things Grandpa has to do so the family can enjoy maple sugar.

The "Excerpt from Miracles on Maple Hill" is different because Marly and her Father are learning maple tree facts and maple syrup facts from Mr. Chris, who obviously has been making maple syrup for a long time. One of the first things they learn is that Mr. Chris to . Marly's dad is thinking about all the maple trees they have at Maple Hill so he wants to know "How many gallons will one tree give?" They also learn that older trees will give more syrup than younger trees when Mr. Chris tells them his secret. . This proves that Mr. Chris has been making maple syrup for a long time and knows a lot about maple trees and syrup making.

Each of these stories has taught us some of the steps we need to know so we can use the sap of maple trees to make maple syrup or maple sugar. From "Excerpt from Little House in the Big Woods" we found out there are tools and equipment we need before we can start, and that there are many steps in the process of gathering the sap and boiling it long enough to make it taste good. We also learned that we need to pay careful attention to the sap while its cooking so that we don't ruin it. In "Excerpt from Miracles on Maple Hill" Mr. Chris told us how much sap we need to make a gallon of syrup, and how much sap we can expect to get from an average maple tree. This tells me that I can learn a lot from listening to or reading stories from older people. To conclude, both "Excerpt from Miracles on Maple Hill" and "Excerpt from Little House in the Big Woods" are talking about the same topic but each of these excerpts gives us different information and we learn many useful things about maple trees, maple syrup and maple sugar from listening to the stories our elders are telling us.