Can You Say Pterodactyl? Level J
Text Type: Fiction • Word Count: 393

Book Summary
Can You Say Pterodactyl? is about a young pterodactyl who cannot say her own name. She encounters a duck and a wren that want to meet her and become her friends. She tries to say her name and scares the animals that she's trying to meet. Then an owl helps her learn to pronounce her name, and she successfully introduces herself.

Reader Supports

• One-to-one correspondence in picture support on each page
  
• Simple sentence structure
  

Reader Challenges

• Unfamiliar story words
  
• Use of made up words
  

Lesson Objectives

Reading Strategies
Children should use a variety of strategies to decode words and bring meaning to print. The targeted strategy for this lesson is: Segmenting.
Decoding words by segmenting the sounds in the word allows children to practice sounding out the parts of the words that they know. The unknown parts will be easier to decode once some of the word is known.

The strategy for comprehension is: Asking questions before and during reading. Children will look at the pictures in the story and identify characters. They will also look for words that may be unfamiliar.

Word and Print Skills
Phonological Awareness
Word awareness

Phonics
The digraph — ea, as in the words: beak, speak, creature, breath, leathery

Word Work
High utility words
she, said

Punctuation
Quotations marks identify words that are spoken by a character.

Comprehension
You will likely address a number of comprehension skills as children work to understand the text. The targeted comprehension strategy for this lesson is: Recognizing the author’s point of view.

Visual Learning
Help children develop an understanding of the relationship between picture details and the text for increased word recognition (for example, the one-to-one correspondence between words and pictures in Can You Say Pterodactyl?)

Targeted Vocabulary Words
High Utility Words
she, said, this

Content Words
leathery, bony, really, barely, rude
These content words are adjectives that children may not be familiar with. You may wish to have children add words to their word list.