Build Background

• Ask students if they have ever thought about how animals survive during the cold winter months. Ask if they know the word scientists use to describe the long sleep that some animals enter for the winter (hibernation). Have them identify some animals with which they are familiar that hibernate. List the animals on the board.

Book Walk

Introduce the Book

• Show students the front and back covers and read the title with them. Have students tell what they think the book is about. Ask what animals they see on the covers and have them predict other animals they may read about in a book about hibernation. Ask whether they think the book is going to be a story about hibernation or a book of facts about hibernation and why they think this.
• Show students the title page. Talk about the information that is written on the page (title of book, author's name). Ask them what they already know about bears and hibernation.
• Show students the table of contents. Read the contents together and have students discuss what they already know about food and winter survival, predictions of how animals survive, and types of animals that hibernate.

Introduce the Strategy: Connect to prior knowledge

• Explain to students that good readers make connections between what they already know and new information they read about. Remind them that they are more likely to understand what they are reading if they already know something about the topic.
• Model how to connect to prior knowledge.
• Think-aloud: As I look at the cover of this book, I notice that the photo shows bats in a cave. I already know that many bats sleep in a cave or another dark place during the day. I predict that I am going to learn that bats may hibernate in caves during the winter, too. I may learn other new information about other animals and where they hibernate, but the section about bats will be easier for me to read because I can connect any new information with what I already know.
• 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 photographs and use the vocabulary they will encounter in the text. Ask them to tell whether they recognize the animals in the pictures and what they know about those animals.
• Reinforce new vocabulary by incorporating it into the discussion of the photographs. For example, on page 4, you might say: The food must be very scarce in the winter for that deer to be eating the tree bark.
• Introduce or remind students that they can help themselves when they come to a tricky word by checking the photographs, thinking about what they have read, and masking parts of an unknown word with their finger.
• Model the masking strategy students can use. For example, point to the word hibernate on page 5. Have students use a finger to cover all of the word except hi-. Uncover the next part of the word, -ber, and finally uncover the last part,
  -nate. Then read the sentence to students and ask if the word hibernate makes sense and looks right.
• 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 more about hibernation. Remind them to stop after every couple of pages to think about what they already know about hibernation and how animals survive during the winter.

Student Reading

• Guide the reading: Give students their books and have them put a sticky note on page 7. Tell them to read to the end of this page. Have students reread the pages if they finish before everyone else.
• When they have finished reading, ask students what words they had trouble with. Have them review what they read about hibernating and how using what they already knew helped them understand new information.
• Think-aloud: When I read about the breathing and heartbeats of animals that hibernate slowing down, I thought of a time when a science teacher I knew had students take their heart rates just after waking and again later after exercising. The heart rates of students were much lower upon waking compared to after exercising. Thinking of this helped me understand what happens when animals hibernate, and it helped me read about heartbeats and breathing. If I hadn’t connected that part to the experiment I remembered, it might have been harder for me to know what the book was talking about.
• Have students read the remainder of the story.

    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 to share any examples of how connecting with their prior knowledge helped them (encourage them to think aloud for other students in the group). Reinforce that stopping to think about what they already know and what they are reading helps them read unfamiliar words and understand new information.
• Think-aloud: When I came to the section called Who Hibernates?, I thought about animals I already knew of that sleep underground. Already knowing that the underground holes are called burrows made that section quite easy for me, so I could concentrate on reading about some of the other animals that hibernate.
• Ask students what words they marked in their books. Use this opportunity to model how they can read these words using decoding strategies and context clues.

Teach the Comprehension Skill: Compare and contrast

• Discussion: Invite students to talk about some of the animals in the book. Which animals did they already know hibernate? Did they learn of any new animals that hibernate? How were the animals the same? How were they different?
• Introduce and model the skill: Tell students that one way to understand new information is to think about how it is the same or different, or to compare and contrast the information. Explain that one way to compare and contrast is to use a graphic organizer called a Venn diagram. Draw a Venn diagram on the board or on a piece of chart paper. Explain or review that when comparing and contrasting using a Venn diagram, details that are the same are recorded in the middle, where the circles overlap; details that are different are recorded on the corresponding sides. Provide a simple model of comparing and contrasting by using two familiar items to complete a Venn diagram as a group (such as a pen or marker/pencil or other classroom items, two toys or manipulatives, or even two different shoes from students in the group). Have students tell how the items are the same and how they are different. For example, A pen and a pencil are the same because they are both used for writing. A pencil is different because it has lead instead of ink and usually has an eraser at the end. A pen may write in various colors, usually cannot be erased, and usually has a lid or cap. Encourage students to evaluate similarities and differences, and include these in the group comparison.
• Check for understanding: Have students turn to page 10 and reread the page. Have students evaluate how the hibernation of snakes, frogs, and turtles is the same (all hibernate underground) and different (hibernating snakes sleep in burrows underground; frogs and turtles sleep in mud at the bottom of ponds).
• Independent practice: Introduce and explain how to complete the compare and contrast worksheet. Have students choose two animals from the book to compare and contrast.

Phonemic Awareness: Manipulate medial sounds

• Say the words sleep and feed, and ask students what is the same about the words. (They each have the long /e/ sound in the middle.) Tell students you can change the middle sound of some words from one vowel sound to long /e/ to make a new word. Say nod and then say need.
• Tell students that you are going to say some words one at a time. You want them to change the middle sound of the word with the long /e/ sound and say the new word. Use the following words: bat, slip, food, snake, fat, wake, door.

Phonics: Long /e/ digraphs

• Write the word sleep on the board. Have students find the word on page 6 and read the sentence in which it is found.
• Ask students what vowel sound they hear in the middle of the word (long /e/). Circle the ee in the word and explain that in some words, two vowels together, called vowel digraphs, make one sound. Tell students that there are several examples in the book of vowel digraphs where two vowels appear together and make one sound.
• Write the following vowel digraph words from the book on a board or chart. Have students come up, circle the letters that make the long /e/ sound, and read the words together: breathing, beats, need.
• For additional practice, write examples such as eating, bodies, free, cheese, feet, green, keen, teeth, beach, leap, seal, treat, pennies, and thief on the board. Have students read the words together and circle the long /e/ digraphs.

Grammar and Mechanics: Pronouns

• Review or explain that there are special words, pronouns, that are used in place of words that tell a person, place, or thing (nouns). Say: If I am telling about the children in our group reading a book, I might write or say, The children met to read a book. The children read Hibernation.” (Write sentences on the board.) Rather than saying “The children” again in the second sentence, I can substitute the pronoun They so I don’t sound like I’m repeating myself. The new sentences would be, “The children met to read a book. (Erase The children and write They.) They read Hibernation.
• Have students turn to page 9. Ask students to reread the page, identifying the pronouns (they). Ask students what noun or noun phrase the pronouns are replacing (Hibernating animals or animals).
• Introduce and explain the pronouns worksheet. Have students read and rewrite each sentence. Then have them replace the noun or noun phrase in each sentence with the appropriate pronoun.

Vocabulary: Content vocabulary

• Check for students’ understanding of content vocabulary words (scarce, hibernate (hibernating), breathing, underground, burrows, winter) by observing their reading and returning to any words they marked with question marks.
• For any words that continue to be challenging, have students orally generate sentences that use the vocabulary words in meaningful ways.
• For additional practice, have students complete the content vocabulary worksheet.

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.

Extend the Reading

Writing and Art Connection

• Have students research an animal that hibernates, drawing a picture of where the animal hibernates and writing a caption to explain the illustration.

Science and Math Connection

• Have students record data for the school week relating to their heart rate just after waking compared to their heart rate after exercise. A simple heart rate for a minute may be taken by having students count the number of beats in 6 seconds and multiplying the number by 10. The chart below is an example that may be used to record data individually or as a group.

Student heart rates

Monitor students to determine if they can:

• relate new information in the book to what they already know about hibernation
• compare and contrast two hibernating animals
• manipulate medial sounds to demonstrate understanding and awareness of the long /e/ sound
• understand that the long /e/ sound may be represented by two vowels together and correctly identify long /e/ vowel digraphs
• understand and identify pronouns in place of nouns or noun phrases
• use content vocabulary words meaningfully and locate words in a crossword puzzle