Before Reading 

Build Background

• Ask students to think about their daily activities from the time they wake up in the morning until the time they go to bed at night. Reinforce the use of content vocabulary. For example, you might say: You make your bed at the beginning of the day in the morning.

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 My Day. (Accept any answers students can justify.)
• Show students the title page. Discuss the information on the page (title of book, author's name, illustrator's name). Have students look at the picture on the title page. Ask what time of day the picture is showing (sunrise or sunset) and what someone might do at that time of day.

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 about in a book. 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 covers.
  Think-aloud: As I look at the front cover of this book, I notice that the picture shows children outside. They have on baseball gloves and are throwing a baseball. They must be playing catch. I know that children often play with their friends after school and on the weekends. This reminds me of activities I do with my friends, such as play games and go out to lunch. The title of the story is My Day. This makes me think about other activities I do throughout my day, such as getting ready in the morning, eating dinner, and getting ready for bed. Thinking about what I know about the events of my day will help me to understand and enjoy the book.
• Have students preview the pictures on the covers and title page in the book. Have them tell how they connected with prior knowledge.
• 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 Vocabulary

• As you preview the book, reinforce new vocabulary by incorporating it into the discussion of the illustrations. For example, on page 3, you might say: It looks like the boy is just waking up. It must be the morning.
• Model for students the strategies they can use to say new words, such as using a known word to say a new word. For example, point to the word lunchtime on page 5. Point to the first part of the word, lunch, and ask students to identify this part of the word. Have students look at the letters in the remainder of the word and encourage them to say the second part of the word. Say the entire word aloud with students. Then read the sentence together and ask whether the word lunchtime makes sense.
• 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 about the boy's day. Remind them to stop after every couple of pages to think about what they do during their day compared to the boy in the story.

During Reading

Student Reading

• Guide the reading: Give students their copy of the book. Have a volunteer point to the first word on page 3. Read the word together (Morning). Point out where to begin reading on each page. Remind students to read words from left to right. Point to each word as you read it aloud while students follow along in their own book.
• Ask students 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 4, I read about the steps the boy takes to get ready for school in the morning. This reminds me of the steps I take to get ready in the morning. I do many of the same things, such as wash my face, get dressed, and eat breakfast. However, I don't always do these things in the same order. Thinking about what I do in the morning helped me to read some of these words.
• Invite students to share how they connected with what they already know as they read.
• Have students read the remainder of the story. Remind them to use what they already know 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.

After Reading

Reflect on the Reading Strategy

• Ask students what words, if any, they had difficulty reading. Use this opportunity to model how they can read these words using decoding strategies and context clues.
• Think-aloud: On page 8, I read how the boy got ready for bed. This reminded me about the steps I take to get ready for bed. I take a shower, brush my teeth, and put on my pajamas. Using what I already know about the activities of my day made it easier for me to read the book. I could recognize the activities in the pictures and this helped me to read the words.
• Discuss with students how using what they already know helped them understand what they read. Invite students to share how they connected to prior knowledge as they read.
• Discuss additional strategies students used to gain meaning from the book.

Teach the Comprehension Skill: Sequence events

• Discussion: Ask students to compare some of the activities during the boy's day with a typical day in their own life.
• Introduce and model the skill: Tell students that a story is a series of events that happen in a particular order. In this story, the order followed the time of day, from morning to night. The order of events is called the sequence. Tell students that unless a story is told in the order in which it happened, it usually does not make sense. Point out the sequence in this story.
• Think-aloud: In this story, the boy completed activities in a certain order. I don't include all the details of the story as I would in a retelling, such as all the things the boy did while getting ready for school. I only tell the most important events in order to tell what the boy did during his day. The first activity he did was that he got ready for school. Next, he ate lunch and played with his friends.
• Check for understanding: Have students share the sequence of events through the end of the story. If necessary, use the pictures in the book as a guide. Tell or review with students that when events repeat in the same order, it is called a cycle, such as day and night.
• Independent practice: Introduce, explain, and have students complete the sequence events worksheet. If time allows, discuss their answers.

Instruct students to use the last page of their book to draw a cycle picture of some of the activities during their day. The cycle may begin with morning and include afternoon, evening, and night. Have students share the activities of their day with the group.

Build Skills

Phonological Awareness: Discriminate long vowel sound /a/

• Say the word day and have students repeat the word. Then have them say the word without the /d/ sound. Have students repeat the long /a/ vowel sound.
• Say the words play and face, and have students repeat the words. Ask students to tell how the words are the same (both have the long /a/ vowel sound). Make sure students can hear that the vowel sounds are the same.
• Say the following pairs of words to students: day,sat; stay,play; rain,name; gate,cat; nail,wait; gray,hat; rake,made; pain,pan. Pause after saying each pair of words and have students show the thumbs-up signal if the vowel sounds are the same and show the thumbs-down signal if the vowel sounds are different.

Phonics: Vowel digraph ay

• Write the word day on the board. Have students find the word on the cover and on page 3, and read the sentence in which it is found.
• Ask students what vowel sound they hear at the end of the word (long /a/). Circle the ay ending of the word and point out that the vowel is followed by the letter y. Review or explain that the a usually represents the long /a/ vowel sound in words with the ay letter combination.
• Ask students to think about other words they know that end with the ay letter combination: play, tray, stay, clay, gray, hay, lay, may, say, today, and way. Write each word on the board, leaving off the ay digraph. Have volunteers come to the board and write the ay digraphs to complete the words. Have students read the words aloud.

Grammar and Mechanics: Capitalization and punctuation

• Write the following sentence on the board: I had a good day. Circle the initial capital letter and the period in the sentence. Read the sentence aloud to students.
• Review or explain that every sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a period or other punctuation mark. The dot at the end of a sentence is a period and a symbol for readers to stop reading.
• Write the following sentences from the book on the board: I read my favorite books. Night comes after the sun has set. The sky is dark. The moon and stars are out. Have volunteers circle the capital letters at the beginning of the sentences and the periods at the end of the sentences.
• Write several sentences on the board without capitalization or punctuation. Ask volunteers to correct the capitalization and punctuation in the sentences.

Word Work: Antonyms

• Have students reread page 3 in the book. Ask them to tell what time of day it is (morning). Then have them identify the time of day on page 7 (evening). Write the words morning and evening on the board. Tell students that these two words mean the opposite of each other. Explain to them that words that are opposites are called antonyms.
• Have students turn to page 5 and locate the word high. Ask them to identify the opposite of the word high (low). If the concept is unclear, turn to page 7 and read the first sentence together, discussing the position of the sun. To reinforce the opposites high and low, encourage students to demonstrate high and low with body movements.
• Ask students to identify additional antonym pairs they know, such as in/out, front/back, up/down, big/little, asleep/awake.
• Independent practice: Introduce, explain, and have students complete the antonyms worksheet. If time allows, discuss their answers.

Build Fluency 

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.

Extend the Reading 

Writing and Art Connection
Have students think about one of the activities of their day. Provide the following sentence structure: I ___________ in the/at ___________. Examples might be: I go to soccer practice in the afternoon. I read stories at bedtime. Have students write and illustrate the sentence, and then share their work with the group when completed.

Math Connection
Have students look at the pages that include analog clocks (pages 4, 6, 7). Discuss the times shown on the clocks and at what times students get ready for school, come home from school, and have dinner. Use a teaching clock, if available, to review telling time by the hour and half hour. Introduce, explain, and have students complete the telling time worksheet. If time allows, discuss their answers. 

Assessment

Monitor students to determine if they can:

• connect events in the story with their own prior knowledge and experiences
• accurately sequence events from the story on a graphic organizer
• discriminate vowel sounds when orally presented with word pairs
• read and write words with the ay vowel digraph
• use capitalization and punctuation correctly
• identify examples of antonyms from concepts and vocabulary in the story

Comprehension Checks

• Book Quiz
• Retelling Rubric

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