Imagine going on a long trip on a bus… and then the bus pulls over… and the driver gets out… and he checks into a hotel room!
That’s what happened in a small town in Northern Ontario recently. More than 100 passengers were stuck on the Greyhound bus for more than 14 hours.
They were heading west from White River, Ont., when they pulled into a gas station. The driver got out and told the passengers to “sit tight.” Then he checked into a hotel.
The people on the bus, including small children and one person who had diabetes, waited on the bus or in a nearby doughnut shop from about 3 a.m. until 5 p.m. the next day.
They tried to call Greyhound but couldn’t reach anyone to find out what was going on.
When the company finally made a statement, they blamed bad weather and said they would look into the situation to find out exactly why the driver left the passengers in the lurch.
The companies didn’t think the weather was so bad because, they said, lots of other vehicles were still able to drive.
Greyhound plans to speak with each passenger to compensate them.
CURRICULUM CONNECTIONS
Writing/Discussion Prompt
Today’s article explains that The Greyhound company plans to compensate (make it up to) the passengers who were on the bus. If you were the owner of The Greyhound company what would you do to make it up to the passengers? What would you say to the bus driver? How would you make sure that this didn’t happen again?
Reading Prompt
When readers read at their best, their reading sounds smooth (it flows). Now that you’ve read today’s article, re-read the article and make sure that each sentence you read is read smoothly (not choppy) and with as few pauses as possible.
Primary
Read appropriate texts at a sufficient rate and with sufficient expression to convey the sense of the text to the reader and to an audience (OME, Reading: 3.3).
Junior
Read appropriate texts with expression and confidence, adjusting reading strategies and reading rate to match the form and purpose (OME, Reading: 3.3).
Grammar Feature: Ellipsis
Ellipses are punctuation marks made up of three dots. Writers use ellipses to show an unfinished thought. The first sentence in today’s article includes three ellipses!
“Imagine going on a long trip on a bus… and then the bus pulls over… and the driver gets out… and he checks into a hotel room!”
Rewrite the following sentence and insert three ellipses in it:
I went to the doughnut shop to get some orange juice and the only juice they had was prune juice and I hate prune juice!
