About the Book 

Text Type: Nonfiction/Concept Book
Page Count: 10
Word Count: 16

Book Summary
In It Is Fall, students learn about some of the things seen and used during the fall season. Supportive illustrations and use of the high-frequency word the support beginning readers.

About the Lesson

Targeted Reading Strategy

• Visualize

Objectives

• Use the reading strategy of visualizing to understand text
• Classify information
• Discriminate initial sound /f/
• Identify initial consonant Ff
• Identify nouns as naming words
• Identify and write the high-frequency word the

Materials

• Book -- It Is Fall (copy for each student)
• Chalkboard or dry erase board
• Picture cards, classify information, initial consonant Ff, nouns worksheets

    Indicates an opportunity for student to mark in the book. (All activities may be completed with paper and pencil if books are reusable.)

Vocabulary

• High-frequency word: the
• Content words: acorn, apple, corn, fall, jacket, leaf, moon, pumpkin, rake

Before Reading 

Build Background

• Discuss with students the names of the four seasons. Write the word fall on the board and point to the word as you read it aloud to students. Repeat the process and have students say the word aloud.
• Ask students what they might see or do during the fall season.

Book Walk

Introduce the Book

• Show students the front and back covers of the book and read the title with them. Ask what they might read about in a book called It Is Fall. (Accept all answers students can justify.)
• Show students the title page. Discuss the information on the page (title of book, author's name, illustrator's name).
• Write the word The on the board. Read the word aloud with students. Explain that this word repeats throughout the book.

Introduce the Reading Strategy: Visualize

• Explain to students that good readers often visualize, or make pictures in their mind, as they read. Readers often use what they already know about a topic and the words from the text to make pictures in their mind.
• Read page 3 aloud to students. Model how to visualize.
  Think-aloud: When I read a book, I pause after a few pages or after reading a description of something to create a picture in my mind of the information I've read. This helps me understand the book. For example, when I read The leaf on page 3, I pictured the leaves on a big tree turning red and orange like they do in the fall. I pictured these colorful leaves floating to the ground as the wind blows.
• Read page 4 aloud to students. Invite them to share what they visualized when they heard the sentence The apple. Show students the picture on page 4. Invite them to compare the picture with the one they made in their mind.
• As students read, encourage them to use other reading strategies in addition to the targeted strategy presented in this section. For tips on additional reading strategies, click here.

Introduce the Comprehension Skill: Classify information

• Explain to students that readers often think about the objects in a story and what they have in common. Thinking about what objects have in common and sorting them into groups helps readers understand and remember what they read.
• Cut out the pictures from the picture cards worksheet and place them in a pocket chart or along the chalkboard ledge.
• Model how to classify information using the pictures.
  Think-aloud: As I thought about how to group these objects, I started by asking myself what they have in common. I noticed that a car and a bus are both powered by fuel. I will group these pictures under the heading Fuel Power. I noticed that the bike, sled, wagon, and wheelbarrow are pushed or pulled by someone to make them go. I will group these pictures under the heading Muscle Power.
• Invite students to suggest other ways to sort the pictures into groups and to explain how they sorted them (number of wheels, number of people carried, and so on).

Introduce the Vocabulary

• Remind students to look at the picture and the letter(s) with which a word begins or ends to say a difficult word. For example, point to the word jacket on page 10, and say: I am going to check the picture and think about what makes sense to figure out this word. The picture shows a coat. When I look at the first part of the word, it starts like /j/. However, the word coat starts with the /k/ sound, so this can't be the word. I know that another word for coat is jacket. The word jacket starts with the /j/ sound. The sentence makes sense with this word. The word must be jacket.
• For additional tips on teaching high-frequency words and word-attack strategies, click here.

Set the Purpose

• Have students read to find out about fall objects. Remind them to visualize as they read. Have students think about how the objects in the book might be grouped together.

During Reading 

Student Reading

• Guide the reading: Give students their copy of the book. Have a volunteer point to the first word on page 3. Read the word together (The). Point out where to begin reading on each page. Remind students to read the words from left to right.
• Ask students to place a finger on the page number in the bottom corner of the page. Have them read to the end of page 5, using their finger to point to each word as they read. Encourage students who finish before others to reread the text.
• Model visualizing and classifying information.
  Think-aloud: As I read page 5, I visualized a small brown object shaped like a nut. I pictured the acorn falling from the tree along with the leaves as the wind was blowing. I pictured squirrels carrying off the acorns as food. I also thought about the round shape of the acorn. I thought about the other objects I had read about so far in the book. The apple and the acorn both have a round shape, but the leaf does not. I wonder if there are other objects in the book that have a round shape.
• Check for understanding: Have students read to page 7. Invite volunteers to explain what they pictured in their mind when they read about the corn, pumpkin, and rake. (Accept any answers that show students understand how to visualize.)
• Cut apart pages 3 through 7 from an extra copy of the book. Place them in a pocket chart or along the chalkboard ledge. Invite students to sort the pictures into two groups: objects that are round and objects that are not round.
• Have students read the remainder of the book. Remind them to continue visualizing and classifying information into groups as they read.

    Have students make a small question mark in their book beside any word they do not understand or cannot pronounce. These can be addressed in the discussion that follows.

After Reading 

Reflect on the Reading Strategy

• Ask students what words, if any, they marked in their book. Use this opportunity to model how they can read these words using decoding strategies and context clues.
• Think-aloud: As I read, I continued to create pictures in my mind of the things we see and do in the fall. When I read page 9, I pictured a large, shiny object in the dark night sky. I pictured the different shapes of the moon during its phases and how the moon sometimes has an orange glow. Picturing these things in my mind helped me to understand and remember the objects in the book.
• Have students share how visualizing helped them better understand and enjoy what they read. Invite the students to share additional examples of how they visualized an object in the book.

Reflect on the Comprehension Skill

• Discussion: Place pages 8 through 10 of the book in a pocket chart or along the chalkboard ledge. Ask students to share how these pictures might be sorted into the groups round and not round. Have volunteers sort the pictures into the groups and discuss why they belong in the groups.
• Independent practice: Introduce, explain, and have students complete the classify information worksheet. If time allows, discuss their answers.
• Enduring understanding: In this book, you learned about objects that are common during the fall season. You have classified these objects into groups. Now that you know this information, why it is helpful to group things together that are alike?

Build Skills 

Phonological Awareness: Discriminate initial sound /f/

• Say the word fall aloud to students, emphasizing the initial /f/ sound. Have students say the word aloud and then say the initial /f/ sound.
• Read the title aloud and have students clap their hands when they hear a word that begins with the /f/ sound.
• Check for understanding: Say the following words one at a time and have students give the thumbs-up signal if the word begins with the /f/ sound: feet, corn, fork, jacket, apple, farm.

Phonics: Identify initial consonant Ff

• Write the word fall on the board and say the word aloud with students.
• Have students say the /f/ sound aloud. Then run your finger under the letters in the word as students say the word aloud. Ask students what letter stands for the /f/ sound in the word fall.
• Have students practice writing the letter Ff on a separate piece of paper as they say the sound of the letter.
• Check for understanding: Write the following words that begin with the letter Ff on the board, leaving off the initial consonant Ff: fan, fun, fin, fat. Say each word and have volunteers come to the board to add the initial consonant Ff to the words.
• Independent practice: Introduce, explain, and have students complete the initial consonant Ff worksheet. If time allows, discuss their responses.

Grammar and Mechanics: Naming words

• Show students a picture of a person, a place, and a thing. Ask volunteers to identify the pictures. Explain that some words name a person, a place, or a thing. These naming words are called nouns.
• Have students turn to page 3 in their book. Invite them to read the page together, pointing to the words as you read them aloud. Ask students to point to the word that names a thing (leaf).

    Check for understanding: Have students reread the book and underline all of the nouns. When they have finished, discuss with students whether the nouns they underlined name a person, a place, or a thing.

• Independent practice: Introduce, explain, and have students complete the nouns worksheet. If time allows, discuss their responses.

Word Work: High-frequency word the

• Tell students they are going to learn a word that they will often see in books they read. Write the word the on the board and read the word aloud. Have students read the word with you.
• Ask students to write the word the on the top of their desk with their finger as you spell it aloud to them, pointing to each letter on the board as you say the letter name with students.
• Read the sentence on page 3 aloud to students. Explain that the word the is used to show which object is being identified. Point to the picture of the apple on the page and say: the apple.
• Check for understanding: Have students use the word the in oral sentences to identify objects in the room.

Build Fluency 

Independent Reading

• Allow students to read their book independently. Additionally, partners can take turns reading parts of the book to each other.

Home Connection

• Give students their book to take home to read with parents, caregivers, siblings, or friends. Have them gather five objects at home and sort the objects in different ways with someone at home.

Extend the Reading 

Expository Writing and Art Connection
Discuss with students objects seen during a season other than fall. Have them draw a picture of an object. Ask students to label the drawing using the sentence pattern: The _____. Reinforce the use of nouns and the high-frequency word the.

Math Connection
Bring in several pumpkins with the tops cut out. Have groups of students each measure the diameter of a pumpkin with string. Then have them take off the top, pull out all of the seeds, and place the seeds on a large piece of wax paper. Have students count the seeds in their pumpkin.

Assessment 

Monitor students to determine if they can:

• accurately and consistently share examples of visualizing while reading
• accurately classify objects during discussion and on a worksheet
• accurately discriminate the initial consonant sound /f/ during discussion
• correctly identify and write the letter symbol that stands for the /f/ sound during discussion and on a worksheet
• correctly understand and identify nouns within text during discussion and on a worksheet
• accurately read, write, and understand the use of the high-frequency word the during discussion  

Comprehension Check

• Retelling Rubric

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