Build Background

• Ask students if they know what a make-believe story is. Then ask them if they know what kinds of other stories there are. Discuss the difference between make-believe stories and stories that tell facts. Provide examples of books from both categories. Have students sort the books into two piles, make-believe and factual stories. Select an information report book from the factual stories pile and explain the difference between factual and make-believe (non-fiction and fiction) books. Explain that White House Pets is a non-fiction book. Tell students that this non-fiction book is going to help them learn new information.
• Ask students if they know who the president is. Ask them if they know where the president lives. Using a map of the United States point out Washington, D.C., and tell students this is the city the president lives in. Have students tell what they know about what kind of house the president lives in. If necessary, explain that the president lives in the White House with his family.

Book Walk

Introduce the Book:

• Show students the front and back covers, title page, and then read the title of the book. Tell the students that good readers use the covers, title page, and title of a book to make predictions about what the author is going to tell about when they are reading non-fiction informational text. Encourage students to make predictions about what the book is about based on the title and photos on the covers and title page. Ask them to share their predictions and their reasons for making them.
• Show students the table of contents. Explain that there are two chapters in the book. Read the chapter titles and tell students that the number that follows the chapter name tells the page number on which the chapter begins. Have students tell the chapter title they think might tell about pets that aren’t cats and dogs. Have them tell the chapter title they think might tell about wild animals. Demonstrate using the table of contents by turning to the page where the first chapter begins.

Introduce the Strategy: Make, revise, and confirm predictions

• Tell students that a fun way to read that helps them understand and remember what they read in a book is to predict, or make guesses, about what they will find in the book.
• Ask students to look at the cover and title page again. Ask them to guess what kinds of animals might have been pets at the White House. Create a modified KWL chart on the board with two columns. Write students predictions in the first column. Then have them look at the back cover.
• Think-aloud: When I look at the information on the front cover and title page I think that presidents had dogs and cats as pets. I am surprised to see a cow on the back. I wonder why. The picture of the cow makes me think that maybe long ago presidents kept farm animals as pets because the pets gave them food. I think that maybe this book isn’t going to be about just cats and dogs as pets. I think it’s going to be about farm animals that have been pets at the White House, too. I’m going to add farm animals to my chart.
• Encourage students to look at the table of contents. Read with them the first chapter title (Odd Pets). Ask them to look at the pets in the chart. Ask them if they think the pets listed in the chart are odd. Tell them they can revise their predictions, or change their guesses, about what pets lived at the White House to include this new information. Ask them to name animals that might be odd pets. Record their predictions in the first column of the chart. Explain that as you read you are going to put an I in the second column of the chart next to each guess if it is in the book and an N if the animal isn’t in the book. Tell students that as they read they will find out what pets lived at the White House.

Introduce Vocabulary

• Model for students the strategies they can use to work out words they don’t know. For example, point to the word bathtub on page 11. Say: I know that one way to read words that I do not know is to look for smaller words in big words. When I look at this large word I see a word I know. I know the word tub. I do not know the first part of this word. Cover up the word tub. I am going sound out these first three sounds: /b/ /a/ /th/. The first part of the word is bath. When I put the two words together, I can read the larger word bathtub. I am going to reread the sentence to make sure it makes sense. “It lived in a bathtub.” I know that alligators like water it would makes sense for one to be in the bathtub. The word bathtub looks right, sounds right, and makes sense.
• Go through each page of the book with the students. Ask students to name the animals in the pictures. Help them with the animal names if they have trouble. Use language patterns they will encounter in the text when describing the animals.
• Write the high-frequency word they on the white board. Have students say the word in a sentence and locate the word in the book. Do the same activity for with.
• Have students find the high-frequency word lived on page 5 in the book. Read the sentence to the students. Have students find the word lived on other pages of the book. Explain that the word lived is an action word that tells what happened in the past. The pets in the book do not live in the White House now.
• For additional teaching tips on word-attack strategies, click here.

Set the Purpose

• Tell students to read the book to find out if their predictions about what kinds of pets have lived at the White House are correct.

• Guide the Reading: Give students their copies of the book and have them read to the end of page 8. Tell 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 thinking and predictions as they read the text.
• Model confirming and revising predictions.
• Think-aloud: When I started reading I predicted that farm animals would be pets that lived at the White House. Sheeps and goats lived at the White House so my prediction was correct. I’m going to add an I next to farm animals on my chart. I did not predict that a snake would have been a president’s pet-- that was a surprise. I wonder what other odd animals presidents and their families had as pets. I’m going to guess that since a snake lived at the White House that maybe another wild animal lived there too, like a monkey. I’ll add monkey to my chart.
• Have students finish reading the book independently to find out other odd animals that have been presidents’ pets.

    Tell the 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 Reading Strategies

• Have students tell what odd pets lived at the White House. Ask students about animals on the list that weren’t in the book.
• Think-aloud: I thought I might read about a monkey that lived at the White House. There weren’t any monkeys in the book, but there was an alligator that was a president’s pet. Making guesses about what is in the book, and then finding out I was right, or that I needed to change my guesses helped me think about what I was reading.
• Have students help you fill in the chart with I’s and N’s. Ask them to try to remember what pets lived at the White House without looking at their books.

Teach the Comprehension Skill: Main idea and details

• Discussion: Ask students what they thought of the book. Ask which of the unusual pets was their favorite. Ask them to tell why it is their favorite.
• Introduce and model the skill: Explain that authors who write informational reports have a big idea in mind when they write a book. Tell students that the "big" idea of a book is what most of the sentences are about. Give students the main idea worksheet. Have students turn to page 4 in their books. Tell students that books like this one often tell the big idea in the title or at the beginning of the story. Ask students to read the last sentence on page 4. Explain that when they look back through the book, they find that all of the sentences are about odd pets that lived at the White House. Direct students to write “odd pets” in the large oval on the worksheet. Next, model how to go to page 5 to find details about the big idea. Say: This page tells about sheep. Sheep are odd pets, so I know that’s a detail about the big idea. In the smaller oval below the main idea, I'll write the word sheep. This sentence tells me that sheep trimmed the grass. That the sheep trimmed the grass is a detail about the sheep. I can write those words in the rectangle.
• Check for understanding: Have students turn to page 10. Ask them what odd pet this page tells about (bears). Then ask them to find a detail about this odd pet (walked in the garden).
• Independent practice: Have students complete the main idea/details worksheet. Discuss their responses.
• Extend the discussion: Have students tell what kind of unusual pets they have or someone they know has. Instruct students to use the last page of the book to draw a picture showing one of the pets from their discussion. Have them label the picture “odd pets” and write a sentence about what makes the pet odd.

Phonemic Awareness: Segmenting Syllables

• Say the word presidents. Tell students that you are going to count the syllables or parts in the word. Repeat the word clapping on each syllable. Tell students that there are three parts to the word, because you clapped three times. Use clapping to demonstrate syllables for several other content vocabulary words from the book. (daughter, garden, grandchildren)
• Ask students to say the word raccoon and clap for each syllable they hear in the word. Ask them to do the same for the words snake, hippo, and elephant.

Phonics: Long e vowel digraphs

• Ask students to turn to page 6 and read the second sentence. Ask them to say the word with the long e sound (leash). Write the word leash on the board. Underline the two vowels ea. Read the word and emphasize the medial vowel sound. Explain that when the vowels e and a are together in the middle of a word they sometimes make the long e sound. Have students turn to page 5 and find the word sheep. Write sheep on the board and explain that two e’s together can make the long e sound, too.
• Then have students brainstorm for other words that have the long e sound. Write the ea words on the board under leash and the ee words on the board under sheep. Any words without these digraphs should be put in a separate column. Ask volunteers to come up to the board to circle the letters that make the long e sound.

Grammar and Mechanics: Plurals

• Use a white board to draw one dog. Write dog under it. Use the white board to draw two dogs. Write dogs under them. Underline the s. Explain that the ending s tells there is more than one.
• Have students read the second sentence on page 4. Have them tell what words end in s and mean more than one (dogs, cats, birds, horses, pets). Use the white board to write the singular and plural form of each of these words. Have students circle the rest of the plural words in the book.
• Write on the board the following singular nouns from the book: raccoon, snake, tiger, and president. Ask students to change the words to their plural form. Give students the worksheet to practice forming plurals by adding s.

Vocabulary: Categorize words

• Ask students to remember what different kinds of pets have lived in the White House. Explain that there are several different categories of pets that have lived in the White House. Ask students what groups the animals in the chart you made could be divided into. (normal pets, farm animals, woodland animals, unusual pets and pets that went to the zoo).
• Give students the categorizing worksheet. Tell them to cut out the cards with the names of different kinds of animals. Tell them to sort the animal names into the groups: normal pets, farm animals, zoo animals. Guide them to put the words sheep, cow, horses, and goats in the farm animals category. Have students sort the rest of the cards into the other two groups. Then tell them to come up with other groups the animals can be divided into and then sort the cards.

Independent Reading

• Remind students that when reading informational text their voice should sound similar to how it sounds when they are telling others about something they know. Allow students to read their books independently or with a partner. Partners can take turns reading parts of the book. If time allows have students reread 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: ________ lived at the __________ house. Ask students to fill in the first blank with a kind of pet in their neighborhood. Ask them to fill in the second blank with a word describing the house where the pet lives, such as color. Then write the sentence: It _______. Ask students to fill in this blank with something the pet does. Have them illustrate their sentences.

Science Connection

• Provide non-fiction picture books about pets. Have partners choose one pet to research. Have them write what they learn using their own words, including what it eats and how it acts. Tell them they will share their research with the class by reading their papers aloud.

Monitor students to determine if they can:

• consistently make, revise, and confirm predictions
• understand and identify the main idea of the book and details about the main idea
• consistently clap words into syllables and count the syllables
• read and understand the digraphs ee and ea make the long e sound.
• read and write the plural forms of words by adding s to the base word
• put animal words into categories and create categories for animal groups