• P. 7 The author says she ferried 700 slaves to freedom. Is that really the number? How did she do it?
• P. 9 What was in the messages she took across the battlefields?
• P. 23 Out of all the names in the world, why did she choose Harriet for herself?

• P. 3—“. . . before she reached her twilight years . . .” Hmm, twilight happens at the end of the day, right when the sun is below the horizon, so I think the author is telling us, in a poetic way, what happened before Harriet reached the end of her life.
• P. 7—“. . . rising out of the fog armed with courage strong in the face of rebels . . .” Armed with courage. Wow. I am thinking about how brave you would have to be to escape when people want to own you, catch you, and hurt you, and you don’t have any weapons. What if my only weapon was bravery?
• P. 15—“. . . under the cover of night . . .” When something is under a cover, it is harder to see, so I am thinking they traveled at night when it would be harder for the slave catchers to find them. Their covering was darkness.

Before reading, ask students, “What do you already know about Harriett Tubman? What do you think we’ll learn after reading the title Before She Was Harriet?”

Sometimes when you're reading, a word just doesn’t sound right. That’s when you can use the "Try a Different Sound" strategy!

Here’s how it works:

• If a word doesn’t make sense, stop and think—could one of the letters have a different sound?
• Try switching the sound of a letter and see if the word makes more sense.

P. 1 - For example, take the word achy.

• You might first read it with a ch sound, like "a-chee," but that doesn’t sound quite right.
• If you flip the ch sound to a k sound, you get "a-key," which makes sense because "achy" means a dull, continuous pain!

P. 21 - Look at the words "read" and "readying."

• You might first think read (past tense) sounds like "red," but in other cases, read (present tense) sounds like “reed.”
• The word readying always has the short e sound, like in "red."

This is one continuous poem with no periods or commas in sight. It is a perfect opportunity to model exquisite fluency based solely on the phrasing.

• P. 3—“But before wrinkles formed [half-second pause] and her eyes failed [half-second pause] before she reached her twilight years she could walk for miles and see clearly under a sky lit only with stars”
• P. 11—“Before she was a Union spy she was a nurse [breath] caring for those hit with bullets [half-second pause] and hatred [half- second pause] and fear [half-second pause] tending to them with bandages and words in the bloodied dirt of southern soil”

There are several wonderful words to learn in this book. You may want to just tell students what they mean and continue with the reading.

• For example, “‘Before she was an old woman she was a suffragist.’ A suffragist was a person trying to make it so more people could vote, especially women. When Harriet was a suffragist, women could not vote yet. ‘Before she was an old woman she was a suffragist, a voice for women who had none.’”
• Other possible words to briefly explain before moving on are overseers (p. 7) flee (p. 14), and lashes (p. 19).
• You may want to add some to a word collector so students can begin using them in their own speaking and writing.
• Possible choices are raspy (p. 5), injustice (p. 5), and courage (p. 7, 18).