Build Background

• Ask students to tell about their pets and the sounds their pets make.
• Ask students if they have read any other nonfiction books about animal sounds. Discuss other animal books students have read.

Book Walk

Introduce the Book

• Show students the front and back covers of the book and read the title with them. Ask what they think they might read about in a book called Animal Sounds. Have students predict the sounds the animals might make.
• Show students the title page. Talk about the information on the page (title of book, author's name).

Introduce the Strategy: Connect to prior knowledge

• Explain that one way readers can understand information in a new book is to think about what they already know about the topic.
• Model how to connect to prior knowledge.
• Think-aloud: When I read a new book, I try to think about what I already know about the topic. When I look at the title of this book and the front and the back covers, I think about some of the pets I have had and the sounds they made. Once I had a guinea pig that squeaked -- guinea pigs squeak. I also had a cat --cats meow. Remembering those animal sounds will help me read and understand this book.
• As students read, they should use other reading strategies in addition to the targeted strategy presented in this section. For tips on additional reading strategies, click here.

Introduce the Vocabulary

• As you preview the book, ask students to talk about what they see in the pictures and use the vocabulary they will encounter in the text. Incorporate content vocabulary words while looking through the pictures or reinforce related comments made by students. For example, while looking at the picture on page 5, you might say: Cows moo.
• Model using one-to-one correspondence by pointing to the first letter of each word. Remind students that they can help themselves when they come to a tricky word by looking at the first letter and checking the picture to see what letter starts like that sound or what word would make sense. For example, on page 4, model pointing to the C in Cats. Say: I am going to help myself by using the picture and thinking about what starts like /c/ (make sound) -- Cats. Read the text, modeling one-to-one correspondence by pointing to the first letter of each word.
• For additional tips on teaching high-frequency words or word-attack strategies, click here.

Set the Purpose

• Have students read the book to find out about animal sounds. Remind them to think about what they already know about animals and the sounds they make.

Student Reading

• Guide the reading: Give students their books and have them put a sticky note on page 7. Have them to read to the end of this page. Tell students to reread the pages if they finish before everyone else. Ask students what they notice about the book so far. (Each page names an animal and the sound it makes).
• Model connecting to prior knowledge.
• Think-aloud: When I looked at page 6, I thought it would be tricky, but I remembered pigs in a petting zoo I visited once. I remembered that the pigs said oink! Thinking about that experience made the page easy because I connected it to a time when I heard pigs oink.
• Have students read the remainder of the book, thinking about what they already know about animal sounds as they read.

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

Reflect on the Reading Strategies

• Ask students what words they marked in their books. Model how they can read these words using word-attack strategies.
• Ask students to explain how connecting with what they already knew about animal sounds helped them read the book.
• Think-aloud: Thinking about the sounds of pets I have had or animals I've visited helped make many parts of this book easy for me. I noticed that if I had heard the animal sound before, it made reading that page easier because I could connect the information in the book with what I already knew.

Teach the Comprehension Skill: Main idea and details

• Discussion: Ask students which animal sounds in the book were already familiar to them. Ask which animal sounds were surprising (possibly Dad snores).
• Introduce and model the skill: Explain to students that books they read have a main idea that tells what the book is about. The title of the book and the pictures can be clues to identify the main idea. Discuss the main idea of this book. (Different animals make different sounds.) On the board, draw a copy of the main idea and details worksheet. Write this main idea in the center space. Explain that the book gives details that tell about the sounds animals make.
• Think-aloud: On page 4, I found out that cats meow. Cats are animals and their sound is a meow. I will draw a cat in the one of the boxes on the chart and label the picture with the word meow. This is an important detail about animals and their sounds.
• Check for understanding: Ask students to point to another detail in the book that identifies an animal and the sound it makes. Model writing a detail on the chart on the board.
• Independent practice: Introduce, explain, and have students complete the main idea and details worksheet. If time allows, discuss their answers.
• Extend the discussion: Invite students to share examples of animals and animal sounds that were not in the book.

Phonemic Awareness: Produce rhyme

• Tell students you are going to say a word from the book and two other words that rhyme with it. Have them listen carefully to the words and then suggest other words that rhyme. For example, if you say bug, rug, tug, they might respond with mug, pug, hug.
• Have students practice producing rhyme with the following groups: dog, fog, bog/cog, hog, jog, log, tog; cat, hat, sat/bat, fat, gnat, mat, pat, rat; pig, wig, jig /big, dig, fig, gig, rig; dad, mad, sad/bad, fad, had, lad, pad, tad.

Phonics: Short vowels

• Write the words cat and dad on the board, and underline the vowel (a) in each word. If possible, display a picture or draw a simple picture to accompany each word. Explain that in the words cat and dad, the letter a stands for the short /a/ sound. Read the words together, blending the sounds as you run your finger under each letter. Ask students to generate other words that rhyme with cat and dad, writing them on the board and emphasizing the short /a/ sound. Have volunteers underline the letter a in each example. Ask students which sound the letter stands for (/a/).
• Explain that you are going to write some new words on the board and you will ask for a volunteer to come up and identify the short vowel sound in each word. Choose decodable (root) words from the book, such as dog and pig. Have volunteers underline the short vowel in each example and tell the sound the letter represents.
• Have students complete the short vowel worksheet.

Grammar and Mechanics: Capitalization

• Review or explain that writers use a capital letter at the beginning of a new sentence.
• Have students read page 3 and 4 together, identifying the capital letter at the beginning of each sentence.

Vocabulary: Onomatopoeic words

• Explain that when some words are spoken, they sound like their meaning (these words are called onomatopoeic words). The book Animal Sounds has a word that sounds like its meaning on every page: bark, meow, moo, oink, chirp, quack, hiss, buzz, roar, snore.
• Invite students to generate other examples of words that sound like their meaning, such as boom, clang, fizz, plop, rip, splash, squeak.
• Have students complete the onomatopoeic worksheet.

Independent Reading

• Allow students to read their books independently or with a partner. Encourage repeated timed readings of a specific section of the book. Additionally, partners can take turns reading parts of the book to each other.

Home Connection

• Give students their books to take home to read with parents, caregivers, siblings, or friends.

Writing and Art Connection

• Create a mural of a farm setting. Have students draw pictures of various farm animals and write animal sounds in speech bubbles connected to each animal drawing on the mural.

Math Connection

• Create four columns on the board: Two Legs, Four Legs, More Legs, and No Legs. As a class, review the book. Have students count how many legs each animal has and tell which column the animal should be sorted into.

Monitor students to determine if they can:

• consistently connect to prior knowledge while reading the book
• accurately locate details about animal sounds in the book and write them on a worksheet
• understand and produce rhyme
• understand and accurately identify short vowels
• understand and identify examples of capitalization
• understand that some words sound like their meaning; accurately match examples of onomatopoeic words