Text Type: Nonfiction/Factual Description
Page Count: 10
Word Count: 51

Book Summary
What Has These Feet? asks students to view photos of animal feet and guess what animal the feet belong to. Students turn the pages to read the answers and view full photos of each animal. The book is written in a format that teaches phrasing and punctuation for questions and statements. Engaging photos support the text.

About the Lesson

Targeted Reading Strategy

• Connect to prior knowledge

Objectives

• Use the reading strategy of connecting life experience and using prior knowledge to understand text
• Identify questions and answers in nonfiction text
• Listen for words that begin with the sound /f/
• Associate the letter Ff with the sound /f/
• Understand punctuation at the end of questions and statements
• Match animal feet with descriptive vocabulary

Materials

• Book -- What Has These Feet? (copy for each student)
• Chalkboard or dry erase board
• Illustrations or photographs of animals
• Question and answer, content vocabulary worksheets

Indicates an opportunity for student to mark in the book. (All activities may be completed with paper and pencil if you choose not to have students consume the books.)

Vocabulary

• High-frequency words: what, has, these
• Content words: feet, animals, duck, elephant, tiger, shark, kind, little, big, soft

Build Background

• Assemble photographs or illustrations of several animals. Create a frame for the pictures that displays only the animalsÌ feet. Ask students to describe the feet they see and guess what animal has the feet. Encourage students to explain their thinking. Then show students entire pictures.
• Ask students to sketch an animalÌs foot. Have students share their sketch with the class. Ask students to guess what animal has that foot. Have the artist describe what the animal foot looks like.

Book Walk

Introduce the Book

• Show students the front and back covers of the book. Ask students to share what they see in the photos. Read the title and authorÌs name. Explain that the title asks a question: What Has These Feet? Show students the title page, and ask them to predict what feet and animals might be shown in the book. Encourage students to explain their thinking.

Introduce the Strategy: Connect to prior knowledge

• Model how good readers use prior knowledge to help them read and understand as they read.
• Think-aloud: When I read a book, I try to think about what I already know about the topic of the book. When I look at the picture on the front cover, I see huge feet and huge toenails. I also see many wrinkles on the animalÌs legs and feet. I need to think about what animal is big and has many wrinkles, so that I can answer the authorÌs question in the title: What Has These Feet? I remember once when I went to the zoo, I saw an elephant. I remember that the elephantÌs feet were huge and that there were many wrinkles on its legs and feet. I predict that one of the animals in the book is going to be an elephant because I remember what an elephantÌs feet look like. Good readers always try to make a connection between the book they are reading and what they already know from their own experience.
• 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

• Go through each page of the book with students. Use questions to preview the content vocabulary and the language patterns they will encounter in the text. For example, on page 3, ask: What kind of animal has these feet? Have students frame the words animal and feet. On page 4, ask students to find the word elephant. Have them describe the elephantÌs feet and find the word big.
• Point out the words at the bottom of the page. Explain that the words on the page contain the authorÌs words and that they are read from left to right. Demonstrate how to read from left to right, pointing to each word as you read. Have students read a page while pointing to each word.
• Write the high-frequency word has on the board or on chart paper. Read the word to students. Turn to page 3 in the book. Read the sentence to students while pointing to the words. Point to the word has.
• Distribute books to students, and invite them to count the number of times has appears in the book. Repeat the same activity for the words what and these.
• For additional tips on teaching high-frequency words or word-attack strategies, click here.

Set the Purpose

• Tell students as they read the book to look closely at the pictures and think about what they know about animalsÌ feet to answer the authorÌs question: What has these feet?

Student Reading

• Guide the reading: Have students put a sticky note on page 8 and read to the end of that page. Remind students to point to the words and use word-attack strategies to figure out unknown words. Ask students to reread the pages if they finish before everyone else.
• Listen to individual students read the text orally. Monitor their use of reading strategies, and intervene when necessary to prompt for strategy use.
• Encourage students to share their predictions about what animal has the different feet as they read pages 3, 5, and 7. Ask them to share the prior knowledge they used to help them make their predictions.
• Model the use of prior knowledge while reading.
• Think-aloud: Before I read the book, I predicted that an elephant was going to be one of the animals in the story because I looked at the photograph and thought about what I already knew about elephantsÌ feet. This helped me understand what I was reading and helped me make a good prediction. I was right, and the photograph was of an elephantÌs feet. When I looked at the photograph on page 7. I could tell that the feet belonged to some type of cat because I remembered that they looked a lot like my catÌs feet, but bigger and stripped, which is what made me think of what I knew about big cats and led me to predict that the animal was a tiger.
• Show students the picture on page 9. Have them use their prior knowledge to predict what animal might be in the photograph. Ask them to use their prior knowledge to share what kind of feet this animal might have.
• Have students finish reading the book independently.

Tell students to 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.

Reflect on the Reading Strategies 

• Ask students what words they had difficulty reading in the book. Use this opportunity to model how they can read these words using decoding strategies and context clues.
• Reinforce how using what they already know about animal feet helped them understand what they were reading.

Teach the Comprehension Skill: Question and answer

• Discussion: Allow time for students to react to the story. Ask them why they think the author put a picture of a shark in a book called What Has These Feet?
• Introduce and model the skill: Explain to students that understanding the organization of a book will help them understand what they read.
• Think-aloud: Sometimes when I read a book, I think about how the book is organized. This makes reading the book easier and more enjoyable. When I was reading the book What Has These Feet?, I noticed that the text is written in a pattern. The author asks a question on one page and then gives the answer to the question on the next page. This pattern of question and answer is repeated four times in the book. I also noticed that the question that the author asks is always the same: What kind of animal has these feet?
• Check for understanding: Have students turn to page 3 and read the question. Have students turn to page 4 and read the answer.
• Independent practice: Have students complete the question and answer worksheet. Discuss their responses.

Phonemic Awareness: Sound discrimination of initial sound /f/

• Have students listen as you say the words feet and foot. Ask students what sounds they hear at the beginning of both of these words.
• Tell students that you are going to say some words. When they hear a word that begins with the /f/ sound, they should stamp their foot. Use the following words: feet, animal, finger, feel, duck, elephant, foot, fiddle, five, tiger, shark.

Phonics: Initial consonant f

• Have students listen as you say the words fish, fan, and fox. Say: I hear the /f/ sound at the beginning of these words.
• Have students turn to page 7 and read the sentence. Have them locate and read the word that has the /f/ sound.
• Draw a large foot on a piece of chart paper. Have students brainstorm other words that begin with the initial consonant f. Write the words the students listed on the foot, and underline the letter f. Have students echo as you read the words aloud.

Grammar and Mechanics: End punctuation

• Turn to page 3 in the book. Read the sentence aloud. Point to the question mark. Explain that this mark is called a question mark and is used at the end of a sentence that asks a question. Have students locate and read other sentences in the book that contain question marks.
• Turn to page 4. Read the page aloud. Point to the period. Explain that a period is used at the end of a sentence that tells something. Have students locate and read other sentences in the book that end with periods.
• Have students use a crayon to highlight the periods in the book in red and the question mark in yellow.

Vocabulary: Content word

• Have students cut out the photos of the animals from the content vocabulary worksheet. Have them put the photos face up in front of them. Say: I am thinking of an animal that has big feet with wrinkles. Have students hold up the photo of an animal you described. Do the same activity with several other animals. Select volunteers to make the descriptive statements.

Independent Reading

• Allow students to read their books independently or with a partner. Encourage repeated timed readings of a specific section or the entire book (in the case of short books). Additionally, partners can take turns reading parts of the book.

Home Connection

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

Writing and Art Connection

• Write the sentence: ________ has ______ feet. Ask students to fill in the first blank with the name of an animal and the second blank with a description of the animalÌs feet. Have students create an illustration to match their writing.

Math Connection

• Have students measure the length of their feet with non-standard units, such as blocks or cubes. Have students trace their foot on a piece of construction paper. Have them use the drawing of their foot to measure objects in the room.

Monitor students to determine if they can:

• consistently connect their prior knowledge to photos and text while reading
• use their understanding of the question/answer pattern in the book to make sense of text
• discriminate words that begin with the /f/ sound from those that begin with other consonant sounds
• locate and read words that contain initial consonant Ff
• match animals to their descriptions
  

Comprehension Checks

• Retelling Rubric