Text type: Fiction/folktale
Word Count: 310
Page Count: 12

Text Summary
In this simple yet compelling Native American tale, Glooskap, the leader of the people, seeks a way to end the perilous winter that has gripped the land. He finds that a giant named Winter has caused the cold weather. After escaping from Winter's spells, Glooskap travels far to the south and finds a woman who can defeat the giant and bring warmth to the land.

About the Lesson  

Objectives

• Cause-and-effect relationships
• Verb tenses
• Manipulate medial sounds
• Variant vowel ow 

Reader Supports

• Some picture support
• Familiar vocabulary 

Reader Challenges

• Topic may be difficult for some students 

Vocabulary

• Glooskap, messenger, Tatler, escaped, wept 

Materials

• Book - How Glooskap Found Summer (copy for each student)
• Chalkboard or chart paper
• Worksheets 1 and 2

+    Indicates opportunity to use book interactively

Before Reading 

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.

During Reading  

Student Reading
Give each student a book and have students whisper-read. Allow each student to read at his or her own pace. Monitor student reading and provide prompts if it appears that a student is having difficulty. For example, if a student seems stuck on a word, suggest he or she try to sound out the word, and then use the picture clues and the context to check whether the word makes sense. Have the student reread the sentence with the new word.

After Reading 

Reflect on Reading Strategies

• Ask students if their predictions about the story were right.
• Ask students whether making connections to another story they knew helped them understand this story.
• Have students share any other strategies they used while reading. For example, ask students to show you a word in the book that they sounded out. Or, ask them to look at a particular word in the story, and ask them how they could figure out this word if they didn’t know it. 

Applying the Comprehension    Skill: Cause-and-effect relationships

• Guided Practice: Give students worksheet 1 and guide them to find the first cause-and-effect relationships in the book.
• What happened when Glooskap went to see Winter? What caused him to fall asleep? We can write "Winter put a spell on him" in the first box.
• What was the effect of Tatler shouting? We can write "Glooskap woke up" in the second box.
• Independent Practice: Have students complete the rest of the worksheet independently. For the last question, students will have to locate an entire cause-and-effect relationship on their own.

Building Skills

Phonological Awareness: Manipulating medial sounds

• Say the word mouse and ask students what sound they hear in the middle of the word. Ask students what word you would have if you changed the /ou/ sound in mouse to long /i/ (mice).
• Give students other words and ask them to manipulate the medial sounds to create new words: block - change /o/ to /a/ (black); black - change /a/ to long /e/ (bleak); rind - change long /i/ to /ou/ (round); bliss - change /i/ to /e/ (bless); bless - change /e/ to /ou/ (blouse). 

Phonics: Variant vowel ow

• Have students turn to page 3 and find words with the ow digraph. Students will find snow and grow. Ask students what sound the digraph makes (long /o/).
• Have students turn to page 7 and find words spelled with ow. Students will find flowers, brown, and crown. Ask students what sound ow makes in these words.
• The difference between the digraph and the diphthong is subtle. Demonstrate how the digraph in grow represents a single sound, long /o/. Write grow and go on the board. Have students read both. Check that students understand that the words rhyme. Long /o/ is a single sound.
• Write the word cow and now on the board. Have students read the words. Read the words slowly, over-enunciating the slip from /o/ to /w/. Explain that in this case, the two letters still have two separate sounds, only they are mushed together.

+    Have students circle all the words spelled with ow. If they represent one sound, such as in grow, have them write the number 1 above the word. If they represent two squashed sounds, such as in flowers, have them write the number 2 above the word. 

Grammar, Mechanics, and Usage: Verb tense

• Have students turn to page 3 and reread the page. Ask them when this story happens and how they know this.
• Have them underline the verbs on the page. Point out that sometimes we add -ed to a word to create past tense, as in the word covered. But other times, we form past tenses by using a different spelling of the word, as in the words grew, had, and could. Tell students these are called irregular verbs because they don’t follow the rule of adding -ed to make the past tense. Have students tell you the present tense of the three irregular verbs.
• Have students reread page 6. Ask students what tense is used when Tatler speaks. Point out that will find is future tense because Glooskap hasn’t found the woman yet.
• Have students find other examples of dialogue in the story, and ask them what tense is used there. Explain that dialogue most often uses present tense, because people usually speak to each other about what is going on now.
• Introduce and explain worksheet 2. Students are to put the verbs at left into past and future tense under the "Yesterday" and "Tomorrow" columns.

+    Have students underline all the regular past tense verbs in the book 

Building Fluency 

Reading Independently

• Allow students to read their books independently or with a partner. Partners can take turns reading in the book. 

Home Connection

• Have students take their books home. They can read it to parents, caregivers, siblings, or friends.

Expanding the Reading 

Writing

• Talk about the format of a folktale that explains how a natural phenomenon came to be. Have students compare this tale with similar tales they have read or heard. Point out the personification of natural phenomena and animals in this story.
• Have students write their own folktale to explain how something came to be, for example: why the moon disappears each month; why the sun rises each day; why the rabbit hops; how the camel got its hump; etc.
• If you feel that this will be too difficult for some students, write the story as a group and record students' ideas on the board.

Assessment

• Monitor student responses during the pre-reading discussion to determine whether they can make logical predictions based on available information. Note the strategies they use as they read.
• Monitor student responses during the discussion to note whether they can identify the events in the story and explain why they happened. Review worksheet 2 to determine whether they can identify the causes and effects independently.
• Note which students have difficulty manipulating sounds in words, and provide additional practice.
• Note whether students recognize the different pronunciations of the variant vowel ow.
• Review worksheet 2 to assess students' ability to use different tenses.