The Rainbow Tulip: A Mentor Text for Inferences (includes freebies!)

The Rainbow Tulip is by Pat Mora. (Amazon affiliate link below.) As a teacher of ELLs, I have found that my students love this book. A handful of words and phrases appear in Spanish, and my Spanish-speaking ELLs' faces light up when they hear their native language being spoken in the book.

The Rainbow Tulip

The Rainbow Tulip

The Rainbow Tulip is written by Pat Mora and is illustrated by Elizabeth Sayles. It is the true story of Estelita's experience participating in a May parade. Estelita, eager to take part in the parade, asks her aunt to sew her a beautiful, multi-colored tulip skirt. When she arrives at school on the day of the parade, however, some boys laugh at her colorful skirt, and Estelita finds herself embarrassed that she isn't dressed like the other girls.

I love this book because the author skillfully addresses a common challenge faced by so many bilingual students who are growing up in two different worlds- an English-speaking school world as well as the native-language world of home. As readers progress through the book, it is evident that Estelita struggles with finding her place in her two contrasting worlds.

I begin the lesson by telling students that we will be inferring as we read this picture book. I remind my students that authors often do not tell readers exactly how the characters are feeling, but they expect their readers to make inferences as they read. Then, I review the two critical ingredients for making an inference while reading:

TEXT + SCHEMA = INFERENCE

I distribute the printable to the students and begin reading the book.

Once you reach a section from the book that is listed on the chart, give your students time to fill in the schema column and the inference column. After you briefly discuss the inferences your students made, continue reading the book. (Click HERE to download this for free!)

The last page of this book contains a note from the author. It is on this page that readers discover this is actually a true story. Estelita is actually Pat Mora's mother, and this is her childhood memory from growing up in the 1920s in El Paso, Texas. 

At the end, the author poses these questions to the reader:

What about you? Have you made a family tree, discovered the treasure of stories that is your family?

What a great extension writing activity this opens up!  Tell your students to go home and ask their parents to share a childhood memory with them. Then, students can write a draft of the story the next day during writing!

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