Book Summary
Life at the Pond is a look at the many different plants and animals that live in and around a pond. It gives an overview of this specialized ecosystem and focuses on how insects, birds, reptiles, and mammals move, eat, raise their young, and build homes. Children will enjoy learning about this small world where so many things are happening. Photos support the text.

Reader Supports

• Simple sentence structure

Reader Challenges

• Limited picture support of text
• Fact based text
• Onomatopoeias throughout the text (e.g., snap, smack, croak)

Lesson Objectives

Reading Strategies
Children should use a variety of strategies to decode words and bring meaning to print. The target strategy for this lesson is: Segmenting the sounds in the word and sounding them out.

Have children use their fingers or two pieces of paper (1"x 4"tag board strips work well) to cover up portions of words to isolate segments for sounding out.

Word and Print Skills

Phonological Awareness
/s/ blends; /sm/, /sw/, /sk/, /st/, /spl/, /spr/, and /sn/

Phonics
Consonant blends sm, sw, sk, st, spl, spr, and sn.

Word Work

High Utility Words
live, they, what, here

Comprehension
You will likely address a number of comprehension skills as children work to understand the text. The target comprehension strategy for this lesson is: Making a connection between what they are reading with what they already know and recalling details.

Before children read the text have them brainstorm things that live in a pond. While children are reading, you might ask if that was something they expected to find (e.g., a frog, a whirligig beetle, a beaver). After reading the text, brainstorm a second list of what they now know about a pond and compare it to the first list.

Visual Learning
Encourage children to use the pictures to prepare them for reading the text. You may ask them to describe what they see in the picture and then predict what words they will find in the text.

Targeted Vocabulary Words

High Utility Words
live, they, what, here

Content Words
Reptiles, insects, blue heron, water strider, springtail, whirligig beetle, lily pad, tadpole, bullfrog, beaver, turtle,

These content words are associated with animal and plant names. These are words that children will encounter in the text. You may want to review and discuss what the words are and have children add them to the classroom word wall or dictionary.