Build Background

• Lead students in a discussion about water. Have them share things they like to do in water and how water changes form when the temperature changes.
• Ask students to share why they think that taking care of the earth’s water is important.

Introduce the Book

Book Walk

• Show students the front and back covers of the book and read the title. Explain that the book is factual and that it gives the reader facts about water.
• Show students the table of contents. Explain its purpose. Read the first two chapter headings to students. Have them share their prior knowledge related to the topics of each chapter.

Introduce the Strategy: Connect to prior knowledge

• Explain to students that good readers think about what they already know about the topic of a book before they read it. Share that this helps readers understand and remember what they are reading.
• Show students the front and back covers of the book and reread the title. Model how to use prior knowledge before reading a text.
• Think-aloud: Before I read an informational book, I think about what I already know about the topic of the book. This helps me connect what I already know about the subject to the new information in the book. The title states that this book is about Earth’s water. I know a lot of things about water on Earth. I know that there is more water on Earth than there is land because I’ve seen a globe. I also know that temperature makes water change form; on a hot day water disappears, and on a cold day water turns to ice. As I read the book, I am going to think about what I already know about water and also try to learn new information to add to what I already know.
• As students read, they should use other reading strategies in addition to targeted strategy presented in this section. For tips on additional reading strategies, click here.

Introduce the Vocabulary

• Use the table of contents, chapter headings, and photographs to preview the book with students. Reinforce new vocabulary by incorporating it into the discussion. For example, on page 4, you might say: The title of this chapter is Water Everywhere. What places did the photographer photograph water?
  On page 7, say: This chapter talks about different forms of water. Does liquid water change its shape when it is in containers of different shapes?
• Draw students’ attention to the bolded words in the text. Explain that the author put these words in bold print to help the reader know that these words are important. Have students locate and read each bolded word and then turn to the glossary to read its definition.
• Reinforce word-attack strategies by modeling how to read unfamiliar words. Read the second sentence on page 8 to students. Point to the word freezes. Explain that when readers come to a word they are not sure of, they can look inside the word for smaller words they know. They then use what they know about sounds and letters to figure out the word. Point to and read the word free in the word freezes. Then run your finger under the letters and demonstrate how to blend the remaining sounds together to read the word freezes. Reread the sentence.
• Point out that good readers always reread to make sure the new word makes sense in the sentence.
• Encourage students to add new vocabulary words to their word journals.
• For additional tips on teaching word-attack strategies, click here.

Set the Purpose

• Have students think about what they already know about water as they read the book. Remind them to look for important new facts about water to add to what they already know.

Student Reading

• Guide the reading: Give students their books and direct them to read the first two chapters in the book: Water Everywhere and Different Forms of Water. Have them put a sticky note on page 13 to remind them to stop reading at the end of that page. 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 what they already know about the subject of water and new facts they learned from reading the first two chapters.
• When students have finished, ask them whether the information in the text matched their prior knowledge about water. Have them explain how this helped them understand what they read. Model making connections to prior knowledge.
• Think-aloud: Before I read the book Earth’s Water, I thought about what I already knew about the topic of the book. I remembered seeing a map of the earth and was surprised to see that our planet has much more water than land. I know that water is in the ocean, lakes and ponds. Knowing that information helped me understand the book and read the content words. Turn to the table and contents and read the third chapter heading: Changing Water. Say: I think this chapter is going to be about the water cycle. I know that when it is cold, water changes into ice, and when it warms up, water melts and turns back into water. Knowing this information should help me understand this chapter.
• Read the heading of the fourth chapter from the table of contents. Ask students to share what they know about the topic of water’s importance.
• Tell students to read the remainder of the book.

    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 what words they marked in their books. Use this opportunity to model how they can read these words using decoding strategies and context clues.
• Ask students to tell how making connections helped them be active readers and remember what they read. Reinforce that knowing something about the topic before reading helped them read the text and understand what they read.

Teach the Comprehension Skill: Main idea and details

• Discussion: Ask students what new facts about water they learned from reading the book.
• Introduce and model the skill: Review or explain that many books are about one thing. Explain that it is easy to know what this book is about because the topic is in the title (Earth’s Water).
• Have students look at the table of contents. Explain that each chapter in this book tells different information about water. Tell students that the chapter heading and the first sentence in the chapter usually give a hint about the main idea of the chapter. Explain that the other sentences in the chapter usually tell details that relate to the main idea.
• Use the first chapter to model identifying the main idea and details.
• Think-aloud: When I read a book that has a lot of facts in it, I like to think about what the main idea is that brings all the facts together. In chapter two, I read some interesting facts: some water on Earth is liquid; some water on Earth is solid ice; some water on Earth is invisible in the air. The main idea I got from all these facts is that water comes in many different forms. I remember that authors often give hints about the main idea in the chapter heading and the first sentence of a chapter. I am going to reread those two parts of the chapter to make sure I have identified the main idea that the author was writing about.
• Check for understanding: Have students reread chapter three (Changing Water). Ask them to put a sticky note on an important fact. Invite students to share the important facts they noted in the book. Lead a discussion on what the main idea of the chapter is. Remind students that the chapter heading and first sentence in a chapter often tell the main idea.
• Independent practice: For additional practice, have students complete the main idea and details worksheet. Have students share their work when finished.

    Instruct students to use the last page of their book to write a paraphraph about what they like to do in water. Have students share their work.

Phonemic Awareness: Manipulate initial sounds

• Explain to students that you are going to play an oral word game. In this game they will make new words by replacing the first sound in the word with a new sound.
• Model for students how to substitute a sound and make a new word. Say: I can take the sound /s/ off of the word sun and put on the sound /f/ to get a new word: fun.
• Ask students to listen as you take the /m/ off the word mad and put on a /b/. Ask students to tell what the new word is (bad).
• Demonstrate sound manipulation with the following words by changing the initial sounds: change feet to meet, band to hand, mate to date, bike to like, seat to beat, hit to sit, rat to bat, funny to bunny, mad to dad.

Phonics: R-controlled vowels

• Write the word father on the board. Read the word and isolate the ending sound /er/. Underline the letters e and r. Tell students that when a vowel is followed by r, it has a sound that is different from its regular short or long sound.

    Have students review the book to find examples of words that have the letter e followed by an r. Tell students to underline the words in the book when they locate them (water, rivers, container, bigger).

Grammar and Mechanics: Nouns

• Explain to students that there are categories of words that tell the names of people, places, and things. Tell students that these words are called nouns.
• Ask students to look through the book to locate the names of places (ponds, lakes, oceans, rivers, streams, earth, North and South Poles). Remind students that these words are all nouns.
• Ask students to look through the book to locate the names of things (animals, ice, air, plants, water, container, ice, gas, puddle, sun, clouds, rain, boats).
• Ask students to look through the photos in the book to locate people (Man, boy, girl, fireman). Remind students that these words are all nouns.
• For additional practice, have students complete the nouns worksheet.

Vocabulary: Content vocabulary

• Give students the content vocabulary worksheet.
• Explain that Earth’s Water contains many content words that have to do with the topic of water. Tell students that the author put many of these content words in bold print.
• Have students look through the book to locate one of the bolded content words. Ask them to write the word in the first column of their worksheet. In the second column of the worksheet, have students record what they think the meaning of the word is. In the third column, have students use the glossary to record the meaning.
• Have students complete the worksheet. When they have finished, have students compare their work with another student.

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.

Writing Connection

• Ask students to share what they have learned about the importance of taking care of Earth’s water. Ask them to think about what they could personally do to conserve water. Have them write a letter to their parents sharing their water conservation plan using the following structure: Dear Parents. I believe it is important to help save Earth’s water. The following is my plan.

Science and Art Connection

• Have students draw an illustration that shows the water cycle. Have students label their illustrations.

Monitor students to determine if they can:

• connect prior knowledge and life experience about water to understand nonfiction text
• locate main ideas and details in nonfiction text
• orally manipulate the initial sounds of words to make new words
• identify and read words that contain e followed by r
• locate and categorize nouns into words that name people, places, and things
• write definitions of content vocabulary using the glossary

Comprehension Checks