The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl

The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl is a “coming of age” story. This means that the young protagonist faces a series of obstacles and experiences that help her mature. At the beginning of the story, what is immature about Lucy’s understanding of other people? What events in this story challenge her and help her grow? What details in the end of the story show the reader that she has become more mature in the way she understands others?

Teaching Suggestion: This prompt asks students to provide evidence from the story’s beginning, middle, and end. Depending on the age of your students, this may be a significant task—for younger or less able students, it may make sense to divide the prompt into sections and only provide one at a time. This will allow students to consider smaller sections of text at one time. If you approach the prompt this way, you might consider providing students with a graphic organizer to help them keep track of relationships among information in the separate sections of text.

Conversely, if your students are ready for an extra challenge, you might require that they gather a more significant amount of evidence, that they offer quoted and cited material as evidence, or that they provide evidence in different categories—for instance, “Lucy’s beliefs about others’ thinking,” “Lucy’s beliefs about what others have to offer,” and so on.