Build Background

• Ask students to think about a stormy day and what they like to do on days when they cannot play outside.
• Create a web diagram on the board or on a piece of chart paper with the phrase Play on a stormy day in the center. Invite students to share what they like to do. Encourage them to write the sounds they hear or words they know on the board as information is added to the web diagram.

Book Walk

Introduce the Book

• Show students the front and back covers of the book and read the title with them. Ask them what they think monsters might do on a stormy day. Have them predict what will happen in the story.
• Show students the title page. Discuss the information on the page (title of book, author's name, illustrator's name).

Introduce the Reading Strategy: Retell

• Explain to students that one way to understand what they are reading is to stop now and then during reading to retell in their mind what is happening in the story.
• Model how to retell.
  Think-aloud: As I read, I am going to stop now and then to remind myself what has happened so far in the story. This will help me to remember what I'm reading and make me think about what might happen next. When I finish the story, I should be able to tell someone what happened first, next, and last in
  the story.        
• Invite students to retell the events of their morning as they got ready to come to school. Guide them by prompting: What did you do first? What did you do next? What was the last thing you did?
• Ask students to discuss how retelling the events of their day helped them remember what happened. Have students place sticky notes on pages 6, 9, 13, and 16. Explain that as they read, they should stop on these pages to think about what has happened in the story. Encourage them to retell in their mind what happens in the story as they read.
• 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: Sequence events

• Choose a story that students are familiar with, such as Jack in the Beanstalk, and retell it out of order (first the giant climbed down the beanstalk, next Jack came down the beanstalk, then the beanstalk grew, last Jack planted the beans). Ask students to explain what is incorrect about the story.
• Discuss with students that a story does not make sense when the events are out of order. When they read a story, the beginning is told first, the middle is told next, and end is told last.
• Model how to sequence events.
  Think-aloud: Write the words lunch line, lunch tray, and eat lunch on index cards. Place them in the same order in a pocket chart or along the chalkboard ledge. Model sequencing a story: When I go to lunch, first I stand in the lunch line. Next, I take a lunch tray for my food. Last, I sit down and eat lunch.
• Pair students to discuss the order of events in their school day, such as a game at recess or getting ready to go home. After pairs have discussed their day, invite them to share the events in order with the group. Write each step on an index card. Have a volunteer place the cards in order. Guide students to understand that the events need to happen in order to make sense.

Introduce the Vocabulary

• While previewing the book, reinforce the vocabulary words students will encounter in the story. For example, while looking at the picture on page 3, you might say: It looks as though the monsters pretend they are cowboys.
• Remind students to look at the pictures and the letters a word begins or ends with to figure out a difficult word. For example, point to window on page 7, and say: I am going to check the picture and think about what would make sense to figure out this word. The picture shows the monsters looking out the window at the rain. When I look at the first part of the word, it starts like win. The word must be window.
• For additional tips on teaching high-frequency words or word-attack strategies, click here.

Set the Purpose

• Have students read to find out what the monsters do during the stormy day. Remind them to stop reading at the end of each page with a sticky note to quickly retell in their mind what has happened so far in the story. Have them think about the event that happened first, next, and so on.

Student Reading

• Guide the reading: Give students their books. Have them read to the end of page 6 and then stop to think about the events that have happened so far in the story. Encourage students who finish before others to reread the text. When students are ready, invite them to retell what has happened so far.
• Think-aloud: I stopped after a few pages to retell in my mind what I had read so far. For example, after page 6, I thought to myself: On the stormy day, the monsters first decided to pretend they were cowboys. Next, they pretended to work in a circus.
• Ask students what happened after the monsters pretended to work in a circus (they raced cars around a track). Have them share their predictions about what will happen next in the story.
• Check for understanding: Have students read to the end of page 9. Ask volunteers to retell the events after the monsters created a messy room. Then have volunteers use the pictures in their book to retell the events from the beginning of the story using their own words. Encourage them to retell the story using the words first, next, and so on.
• Have students read the remainder of the book. Remind them to continue stopping on pages with sticky notes to retell in their mind what they have 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 Strategy

• Ask students what words, if any, they marked in their books. Use this opportunity to model how they can read these words using decoding strategies and context clues.
• Have volunteers retell the events that happened after Lurk decided to sing
  (the monsters gathered materials for shadow puppets and put on a shadow
  puppet play).
• Ask students to explain how retelling the events of the story in their mind as they read helped them understand the story.
• Think-aloud: As I retold the story in my mind, it helped me to think about what happened in the story and how I could I could use my own words to retell the events in order.

Reflect on the Comprehension Skill

• Discussion: Cut out the pictures from the story. Place them in order in a pocket chart or along the chalkboard ledge. Have students take turns using the pictures to sequence the events in order using the words first, next, then, and so on.
• Independent practice: Introduce, explain, and have students complete the sequence events worksheet.

    Extend the discussion: Have students use the back cover of their book to draw pictures of what they do first, next, then, and last when reading a new book. Have them cut out the pictures and use them to retell their story to a partner.

Phonemic Awareness: Identify final sounds

• Say the words hang and hanger aloud to students. Ask them what is different about the two words. Have them say the word hang aloud. Ask students to add -er to the end of hang and say the new word aloud (hanger). Repeat the process with the words ham and sweat.
• Check for understanding: Read the following words to students one at a time: center, teacher, gorilla, slipper, nickel, honey, ladder, and lemon. Invite volunteers to clap their hands together when they hear the -er sound at the end of a word.

Phonics: R-controlled vowels

• Write the words monster and thunder on the board and have students say the words aloud with you. Underline ­-er at the end of each word and ask volunteers to identify the sound -er makes. Explain that the letters er are one of the letter combinations that stand for the sound they hear at the end of the words monster and thunder.
• Check for understanding: Encourage students to brainstorm words with the -er ending and write them on the board. Have volunteers underline the ­-er­ ending in the words and say the sound the ending letter combination stands for.
• Independent practice: Introduce, explain, and have students complete the r-controlled vowels worksheet.

Grammar and Mechanics: Proper nouns

• Explain that writers use a capital letter at the beginning of a word that names a person, place, or thing. Review or explain that these special naming words are called proper nouns. Since proper nouns tell the name of something, they begin with a capital letter.
• Have students turn to page 4. Say: I know that Bonk begins with a capital letter because it is the name of a monster. Since that word names the character, it is called a proper noun. Have students identify other names in the story (Lurk, Uzzle).
• Check for understanding: Ask for volunteers to identify other examples of proper nouns and discuss what makes the words proper nouns (for example, names of students in the classroom, name of their city or town, name of the school, name of a street). Then have students name nouns that do not require a capital letter. Write each word on the board in lowercase letters. Review each word aloud one at a time. Have students come to the board and replace the lowercase letter with a capital letter at the beginning of each proper noun.
• Independent practice: Introduce, explain, and have students complete the proper nouns worksheet.

Vocabulary: Time and order words

• Have students turn to page 3. Ask which word lets the readers know the order in which something is happening (First). Review or explain that authors sometimes use words such as first or in the beginning to explain the order of events in a story. Write the word first on the board. Invite students to identify other time and order words in the story (next, then). Have them identify other time and order words they know (last, finally). Write these words on the board.
• Check for understanding: Give students four index cards. Have them write the words first, next, then, and last on index cards. Ask students to hold up each card in order as they retell a familiar story to a partner.

Independent Reading

• Allow students to read their books independently or with a partner. Encourage repeated timed readings of a specific section in 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. Have students ask someone at home to retell a favorite story using time and order words.

Writing and Art Connection
Guide students to write an original big book based on Monsters' Stormy Day, such as The Children's Stormy Day. Reinforce using time and order words by having them brainstorm what happened first, next, then, and last.

Science Connection
Have groups of students design shadow puppets to use to retell a familiar story they know. Use the performances to build student understanding of shadows and how they are formed.

Monitor students to determine if they can:

• accurately and consistently demonstrate retelling the story during discussion
• accurately sequence events during discussion and on a worksheet
• accurately discriminate -er final sound in words during discussion
• identify and write examples of r-controlled vowel words
• understand that proper nouns are naming words and are capitalized; correctly identify proper nouns on a worksheet
• understand and identify words that indicate time and order

Comprehension Checks

• Retelling Rubric