Build Background

• Have students close their eyes and imagine a place where it is always winter. They have to wear lots of clothes when they go outside, otherwise they will freeze. No plants can grow because it is too cold.
• Have students open their eyes and describe what this place would be like.
• If students have had experience with other folktales that describe how a natural phenomenon came to be, review the stories. Have students work in pairs to use the structure of a familiar folktale to orally tell a story about the changing seasons.

Preview the Book

• Show students the front and back covers and read the title. Ask students what this book might be about based on the title and the illustrations.
• Open the book to the title page. Discuss what students see in the picture and what further ideas they have about the book.
• Show students the illustrations and have them make predictions about what they think is happening. Help students make connections between this book and other books they might have read by asking them what kind of story it is and how it might be like another story they know.

Introducing Vocabulary

• Read the title with students and model how to pronounce Glooskap. Explain that often, Native American stories were passed down through storytellers, rather than written down, so spellings of Native American words can vary.
• Turn to page 5 and review the words messenger and Tatler. Ask students what a "tattler" might be. How does that relate to sending messages?
• Review other vocab as needed. 

Introducing the Comprehension    Strategy: Cause-and-effect relationships

• Model: Explain a simple cause-and-effect relationship. You can even demonstrate one by placing an ice cube in a dish. Place the dish in the sun. Explain that the heat of the sun caused the ice to melt. The effect of the heat was the ice melting.
• Check for Understanding: Ask students to name the causes and effects in simple relationships. If someone lets go of a helium balloon, what is the effect? If someone slips and falls on a banana peel, what is the cause? 

Set the Purpose
Tell students that you want them to read in order to find out what caused Winter to go away. 

Word-Attack Strategies

• Remind students to use any or all of the following strategies if they come to an unfamiliar word:
• Use picture clues. Students can look at the pictures on the page. They can ask themselves if the pictures give any clues that help them figure out the word.
• Reread the sentence. They can read the sentence more than once and think about what word might make sense in the sentence.
• Sound out the word. They can use what they know about sound/symbol relationships to blend the sounds in the word together. They should think about whether the word makes sense in the sentence.
• Look for chunks in the word. They can look for parts of words they know within larger words.
• Keep reading. They can read past the word they don’t know and think about what words might make sense. They should then go back and read the sentence to check for sense.