Swindle

Written by Gordon Korman

Published by Scholastic Press an Imprint of Scholastic Inc., 2008

This is a story of a boy named Griffin Bing who finds a very valuable baseball card in the rubble of an abandoned house. After selling it to someone and getting "swindled" out of a very large amount of money, he gets together a team to steal back the card. 

Lexile Level: 730L

Age Range: 9-11 years

Page Count: 252

Suggested Delivery: Independent Read

Key Words: Justice, Heist, Plan, Adventure, Friendship

Internet Resources:

Gordon Korman Website

http://gordonkorman.com/

This is the website of the author which has links that students can click on to better get to know the author and to explore more of the books that the author has written. 

Scholastic Book Page

http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/book/swindle#cart/cleanup

This scholastic webpage is great for both students and teachers. There are links to teaching resources for the teacher to use when teaching the book. For the students there is a video book trailer that they can watch before reading the book. 

Vocabulary: 

• Swindle: to cheat, steal, trick, deceive, defraud, lie, rob, con, backstab, obtain dishonestly.
• Collectible: an object valued by collectors.
• Heist: a robbery.
• Ultimate: the greatest or final. 
• Mechanism: a piece of a machine.
• Exhilaration: a feeling of excitement and happiness.

Teaching Suggestions:

1. Ask the students to read the article http://listosaur.com/history/10-greatest-swindles-in-united-states-history/ and pick one of the greatest heists from the list and have them present it to the class. 
2. Give the students the scenario: the house is like a fortress with burglar alarms on all the windows and doors. The only safe entry point is a skylight on the roof of the house. In addition, there is a dangerous guard dog on duty inside the house. And a busybody neighbor sits on his porch staring at the house all day long. AND the thief himself seldom leaves the house. BUT you must get inside to get back what is yours. How will you do it? Have the students describe the team that they would use and why. Have the class vote on the best plan. 
3. As they read ask the students to think about the question: What do you think of Griffin's plan to get revenge on Swindle? Have them respond to the question before and after the plan in completed in their reading journals. 

Reading Strategies:

1. Before: Start off with a Student Questions for Purposeful Learning by asking them to discuss what they might do if they found something very rare that was worth a lot of money and they traded it in and then found out they got much less than it was worth, what would they do?
2. During: While students are reading have them place Post-Its on places in the text that they feel important that they want to talk about in a book discussion. Give them different colored Post-Its: one for things they found interesting, one for parts that they have questions on, and one for parts that they did not like.  
3. After: Have the students get into groups of 4 and discuss the parts of the text that they put Post-Its on. One student will be elected to start to book discussion with one of the parts of the text they want to start talking about.

Writing Activity:

Have the students describe each of the members of the team that Griffin chooses for the heist and then answer the question how do each of their talents contribute to the success of the heist and how does Griffin know that he can trust them?