Text Type: Nonfiction/Concept
Page Count: 10
Word Count: 67

Book Summary
This book informs students of names and types of vegetables that can be grown in any garden, including a container garden on a rooftop in a city. The young boy in the story waters his various vegetable plants daily in hopes of creating his own salad. Detailed, supportive illustrations, repetitive phrases, and a refrain support early readers.

About the Lesson

Targeted Reading Strategy

• Connect to prior knowledge

Objectives

• Use the reading strategy of connecting to prior knowledge to understand text
• Identify cause and effect
• Discriminate initial consonant blend /gr/
• Identify initial consonant blend gr
• Recognize and use exclamation points
• Recognize and identify content-specific words

Materials

• Book -- Grow, Vegetables, Grow! (copy for each student)
• Chalkboard or dry erase board
• Cause and effect, initial consonant blend gr, and content sight words worksheets
• Discussion cards

      Indicates an opportunity for students to mark in the book. (All activities may be demonstrated by projecting book on interactive whiteboard or completed with paper and pencil if books are reused.)

Vocabulary

• High-frequency words: a, I, make, the, to, want
• Content words: bean(s), carrot(s), cucumber(s), green, grow, onion(s), pea(s), pepper(s), plant(s), salad, tomato(es), vegetable, water

Build Background

• Print the word vegetables on the board and point to it as you read it aloud to students. Repeat the process and have students say vegetables aloud.
• Ask students to name vegetables they have seen or tasted. List the vegetables on the board as students name them.
• Place a * by vegetables listed on the board that are in the book. Say: In Grow, Vegetables, Grow! the boy waters his ____, ____, ____, ____ and _____. You will see ____, ____, ____, ____ and ____ in this book.

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 Grow, Vegetables, Grow! (Accept all answers that 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 following repetitive sentences on the board: I water the ___ plants. Grow, ____, grow! Read the sentences aloud, pointing to the words as you read them to students. Have students read them aloud. Explain that these words repeat throughout the book.

Introduce the Reading Strategy: Connect to prior knowledge

• Explain to students that good readers make connections between what they already know and new information they read. Remind students that thinking about what they already know about the topic of the book will help them understand what they read.
• Model connecting to prior knowledge using the information on the book covers.
  Think-aloud: When I read the title on the cover, it reminds me of the vegetable gardens my grandpa and dad used to grow. It makes me think of the kinds of vegetables they grew in rows: carrots, peppers, tomatoes, green beans, onions, cucumbers, and peas. Pair hand gestures with the words under, climb, tall, on, and spread out in the following sentence: I remember that the onions and carrots grew under the ground, while the green beans, peas, and tomatoes needed stakes to climb as they grew tall. The cucumbers took up lots of space on the ground because their vines spread out far. I don't have a garden in my yard, but I grow tomatoes in a little tub on the patio just outside my kitchen door. I know that garden plants need water, air, sun, and warm weather to grow and produce vegetables. Like the boy in this story, I water my tomatoes each hot, dry day during the summer. My plants grow. Then I have tomatoes for my salad.
• Invite students to share how they connected to prior knowledge based on the covers and title page of the book.
• 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: Cause and effect

• Explain to students that books often demonstrate events that cause other things to happen. For example, in Grow, Vegetables, Grow! a boy takes care of his plants by watering them. His careful watering causes them to grow. Watering is the cause, and growth of the plants is the effect.
• Explain to students that causes make something happen, and effects are what happen as a result of causes. Create two columns on the board and write Cause at the top of the left column and Effect at the top of the right column. Point to each word as you read them aloud with students.
• Model how to identify cause as a beginning and effect as an ending or result.
  Think-aloud: If I forget to tie my shoes and I go out to recess, I may trip and fall as I am running around. The cause in this situation would be forgetting to tie my shoes. I will write this under the Cause heading (forget to tie my shoe). The result of this would be tripping and falling. I will write this under the Effect heading (tripping and falling). Tripping and falling could lead to something else. I might skin my knee if I fall. I will write I skin my knee under Cause. Ask students to tell an effect that might happen as a result of skinning their knee and write it under the Effect heading. Invite students to name other causes and effects that might result from forgetting to tie their shoes.
• Review the vegetables students have seen and tasted as discussed and listed on the board in the Build Background section of this lesson. Discuss what caused these vegetables to grow.

Introduce the Vocabulary

• While previewing the book, reinforce the vocabulary words students will encounter. For example, while looking at the picture on page 4, you might say: These are peppers. Peppers can be green, red, orange or yellow. Peppers can be large like my fist or small like my pinky finger. (Ideally, have fresh or plastic models of the vegetables in the book. Ideally, students can see, smell, and taste these vegetables as they pair them with written words.)
• On the board, list the vegetable words students will encounter in the book as they read: carrots, peppers, tomatoes, green beans, onions, cucumbers, and peas. Place pictures of the vegetables next to the words to act as visual cues.         
• Remind students to look at the picture and the letters with which a word begins and ends to figure out a difficult word. For example, point to the word pepper on page 4 and say: I am going to check the picture and think about what would make sense to figure out this written word. The picture shows a vegetable. When I look at the first part of the word, it starts like /p/. Then there is the short /e/ sound. The /p/ sound is in the middle of the word. The word ends with the /r/ sound. I put these sounds together and hear /p/, /e/, /p/, /r/ and think of a word that has those sounds and matches the picture. A pepper is a vegetable, and the word pepper has all of those sounds. The sentence makes sense with this word. The word must be pepper. When I see the word grow in the next line, I make my sounds: /g/, /r/, /o/. The letter o says its name here because the w after o makes it say its name. When I put those sounds together, I hear /g/, /r/, /ow/. Grow makes sense because that is what pepper plants do when they get water.
• For additional tips on teaching high-frequency words and word-attack strategies, click here.

Set the Purpose

• Have students use what they already know about vegetables to help them read the book. As they read, remind them to think about what causes plants to grow.

Student Reading

• Guide the reading: Give students their copy of the book. Ask them 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 connecting to prior knowledge.
  Think-aloud: On page 5, I see the boy watering a tall, bushy plant in the container. This plant has leaves and round things growing on it. I know that apples grow on trees, and apples start with the short /a/ sound. The word in this sentence starts with the /t/ sound, so it cannot be the word apple. The picture of a tomato plant I saw before looks similar to this, and tomato starts with the /t/ sound. So the boy must be watering the tomato plant. I have eaten tomatoes on my salads. Sometimes, I slice the tomato and eat it on my sandwich. I like tomatoes, especially when they are very red and firm. The picture in this book looks like the tomato plants I grow in the tubs on my patio.
• Invite students to share how they connected with what they already knew as they read.
• Review cause and effect as related to this book: There are several things that cause plants to grow. Ask students to name things that cause plants to grow. Soil, air, warmth, sun, and water all work together to cause a plant's growth. Display, introduce, and explain the cause and effect worksheet on the board. Draw on the cause side a picture of a plant getting lots of sun but no water. Say: Here is a picture of a plant getting lots of sun but no water. If the plant doesn't get enough water, what will the effect be? (die, wilt, burn, and so on) Ask for a volunteer to give another cause that could happen with growing plants or vegetables and ask other students to name possible effects. Draw responses on the board or allow a student to draw a picture of the effect.
• Check for understanding: Read to the end of page 8. Encourage students to share how they connected to prior knowledge as they read. (Accept all answers that show students understand how to connect to prior knowledge.)
• Have students read the remainder of the book. Remind them to use what they already know about vegetables and other plants to help them understand new information 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.

• 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.

Reflect on the Reading Strategy

• Think-aloud: When I read the end of the book, I thought about the vegetables I saw as a little girl. When I was small, I saw these vegetables in my grandpa's and dad's gardens. But when my own children were small, we did not grow vegetables in a garden. Instead, we bought most of our vegetables in the produce department at the grocery store. Today, we buy many vegetables from the produce department at the grocery store. We like to put many kinds of vegetables in our salads at home. Sometimes I make a three-bean salad. Sometimes I make a large garden salad with several kinds of lettuce, as well as tomatoes, carrots, peppers, and cucumbers. Connecting what I already know to what is in the story helps me understand and remember the story.
• Have students draw a picture on a separate piece of paper showing how they connected to prior knowledge while reading about watering vegetables. Invite them to share their picture and explain it to the rest of the class.
• Ask students to explain how thinking about what they already knew helped them to understand and remember the story.

Reflect on the Comprehension Skill

• Think-aloud: When I read the book, I thought about how we grow vegetables and what vegetables need in order to grow. I also though about how we eat vegetables at our house. Sometimes we cook the vegetables. Cooking causes them to become less colorful, softer, and easier to chew. Sometimes we eat our vegetables raw. Keeping vegetables raw (as they are in salads) causes them to stay more brightly colored and crunchy. The effect is that I must chew raw vegetables more than cooked vegetables. Changes in a vegetable's color, crunchiness, and flavor are the effects of cooking vegetables.
• Discussion: Discuss other cause-and-effect situations that students thought about in relation to the story.
• Independent practice: Have students complete the cause and effect worksheet. If time allows, discuss their responses.
• Enduring understanding: In this book, you learned about watering as one cause for a plant's growth. Now that you know this information, why do you think plants need soil? What effect occurs when soil is blown or washed away from plants' roots?

Phonological Awareness: Initial /gr/ blend

• Say the word grow aloud to students, emphasizing the initial /gr/ sound. Have students say the word aloud and then say the /gr/ blend.
• Read pages 5- 6 aloud to students. Have them raise their hand when they hear a word that begins with the /gr/ 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 /gr/ blend: game, grouchy, giraffe, garden, green, gravy, grim, gate, grit, gum, grate, glue.

Phonics: Identify initial consonant blend gr

• Write the word grow on the board and say it aloud with students.
• Have students say the /gr/ sound aloud. Then run your finger under the letters in the word as students say the whole word aloud. Ask students to identify which letters represent the /gr/ sound in the word grow.
• Have students practice writing the letters gr on a separate piece of paper while saying the /gr/ sound.
• Check for understanding: Write the following words that begin with the /gr/ sound on the board, leaving off the initial gr blend: green, grow, great, gravy, grit. Say each word, one at a time, and have volunteers come to the board and add the initial gr to each word.
• Independent practice: Introduce, explain, and have students complete the initial consonant blend gr worksheet. If time allows, discuss their answers.

Grammar and Mechanics: Exclamation points

• Write the following sentence on the board: Grow, vegetables, grow! Read the sentence aloud with students. Explain that every sentence has a signal at the end so readers will know when to stop reading. Ask a volunteer to come to the board and point to the signal at the end of the sentence.
• Explain that the signal is called an exclamation point. Have students say the phrase exclamation point aloud. Because exclamation is a four-syllable word, break the word into noticeable parts with emphasis on a rhythm: ex- cla- ma- tion point. Note that the exclamation point is like a stop sign because it tells readers to stop reading. It also tells the reader that something is being said with a lot of energy, emotion, excitement, or power. Explain to students that when an exclamation point is used in a sentence, the sentence is called an exclamatory sentence.
• Reread the sentence aloud to students. Emphasize how the voice shows excitement, enthusiasm, and energy at the end of an exclamatory sentence.
• Ask volunteers to create a sentence that needs an exclamation point. The sentence should show power, energy, and excitement. Write each exclamatory sentence on the board, leaving off the exclamation point. Read the sentences aloud to students without stopping. Then have volunteers come to the board and add an exclamation point to each sentence. Reread the sentences, stopping at the exclamation point at the end of each sentence and adding the proper vocal emphasis.

      Check for understanding: Have students locate and circle all the sentences in the book that end with exclamation points. Have them read the exclamatory sentences to a partner. Listen for expression, enthusiasm, emotion, and energy.

• Independent practice: Have students create and share their own exclamatory sentences aloud. Reinforce their use of expression to show emphasis, enthusiasm, and emotion.

Word Work: Content sight words

• Tell students they are going to learn words that are special in this book. Using different colors, write the words carrots, cucumbers, green beans, onions, peas, peppers, tomatoes, and vegetables on the board. Read each word aloud as you point to the word. Have students read each word with you.
• Use a card or paper to cover the s at the end of each word. Ask students to read the singular form of each word. Then uncover the s at the end of each word and have students read the plural form of the word. Alternately cover and uncover the s, giving students practice reading the singular and plural forms of each word.
• Hand out drawings or photos for each of the words, asking students to name the picture as they receive it. If the student does not know the name of the picture, label it and have the student repeat the name.
• Say: Who has tomatoes? Allow the student who has the accompanying drawing or photo to match the picture to the word on the board. Continue this activity with the other seven words until all words on the board have matching drawing/photos.

      Check for understanding: Introduce, explain, and have students complete the content sight words worksheet.

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 identify one cause and one effect for the listener.

Concept Writing Connection
Provide students with books about seeds and plants. Have them choose one vegetable and illustrate it. Under the drawing, have students write two sentences telling about their picture, spelling words using the sounds they know along with the visual cues on the board and in the book.

Art Connection
Provide various types of seeds. Using glue or paste, allow students to use the seeds to outline or complete pictures of gardens or nature they've drawn. For example, seeds can be sprinkled down rows of a garden scene for a three-dimensional, textured effect. Apple seeds can be glued to a drawing of an orchard. Small seeds or beans can outline stems of flowers or trunks of trees.

Science Connection
Work with students to plant seeds. Be sure to review what causes the seeds to grow: soil, air, warmth, sun, and water. Have students keep a daily journal about the seeds' growth. Journals can be completed with pictures, labels, and simple sentences.

Skill Review
Discussion cards covering comprehension skills and strategies not explicitly taught with the book are provided as an extension activity. The following is a list of some ways these cards can be used with students:

• Use as discussion starters for literature circles.
• Have students choose one or more cards and write a response, either as an essay or a journal entry.
• Distribute before reading the book and have students use one of the questions as a purpose for reading.
• Cut apart and use the cards as game cards with a board game.
• Conduct a class discussion as a review before the book quiz.