Build Background

• Ask students to share personal experiences they have had as a member of a team. Discuss what it means to be a team player.

Book Walk

Introduce the Strategy: Make text-to-text connections

• Show students the front and back covers of the book and read the title. If students have read other books about the Monsters, ask them if they recognize the characters shown on the cover illustration. Model how to make connections to other texts.
• Think aloud: I've seen these Monster characters before. I remember that they are good friends, and that like most good friends they don't always get along. If I remember what I've read about them in other stories, it will help me understand what I read in this story.
• Ask students what they remember about other Monsters stories they have read.
• Show students the title page and ask them what they see in the picture. Have them make predictions about what will happen in the story based on what they see on the covers, title page, and what they already know about the characters.
• Go through each page of the book with the students, encouraging them to use the vocabulary they will encounter in the book in their discussion. Ask students to talk about what they see in the illustrations and to predict what will happen next. For example, on page 3 ask: Who are the characters in the picture? What are they doing? What do you think they will do next?
• As you turn to a new page, ask students to revise or confirm their predictions. Continue to reinforce how knowing something about the characters from reading other stories will help them understand this story.

Introduce the Vocabulary

• As you preview the book with students, reinforce any difficult language patterns or vocabulary. For example, on page 7, say: I see the Monsters practice soccer. Who is the goalie in this picture?
• Model for students the strategies they can use to work out words they don't know. Point to the word watch on page 3. Ask students how they could read this word if they didn't know it. Suggest they could try to sound it out by using what they know about letters and sounds, looking specifically at the beginning and ending sounds. They could also think about what word would make sense here. Read the page to them and ask what word makes sense in the sentence.
• For additional teaching tips on word-attack strategies, click here.

Set the Purpose

• Have the students read the book to find out if their predictions about what happens in the story are correct.

Student Reading

• Guide the reading: Give students their books and have them put a sticky note on page 7. Direct them to read to the end of this page. Tell students to reread the pages if they finish before everyone else.
• When they have finished, ask students if their predictions were correct. Have them revise their predictions based on any new information they read.
• Model making connections to previously read Monster stories.
• Think aloud: I remember that the Monsters are good friends. I also remember that they help each other out when there is a problem. Remembering what the Monsters are like from other stories helps me predict what might happen in this story. I think that Bonk will change his mind and decide he needs the other Monsters. Because I know they are good friends, I think the other Monsters won’t be angry at Bonk.
• Tell students to read the remainder of the story and to confirm or revise any predictions they have made about the Monsters.

    Tell the 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 could read these words using decoding strategies and context clues.
• Reinforce how using what they already know about the Monsters helped them understand what they read. (Connecting prior knowledge of characters helps students make logical predictions about how they will act and what might happen in the story.)

Comprehension: Sequencing

• Introduce and model: Tell students that all stories have a series of events that happen to the characters and that this is called the plot of the story. Explain that the order of events is usually important. Use a familiar story such as Little Red Riding Hood to demonstrate sequence. Say: First Red Riding Hood sets off to see her grandmother. Then she meets the wolf. The wolf runs ahead to Grandmother’s house. He is waiting in Grandmother’s bed when Red Riding Hood gets there. Red Riding Hood thinks the wolf is her grandmother, but she sees his big teeth and asks why she has such big teeth.
• Check for understanding: Have students explain why the story would not make sense for the wolf to go to the grandmother's house without knowing that Little Red Riding Hood was going there, and why it would not have made sense for Little Red Riding Hood to say what big teeth the wolf had if the wolf had not yet arrived.
• Discussion: Ask students to tell the first thing that happened in Monster Soccer. Discuss why this event needs to happen first (if the Monsters had not started a soccer team, there would have been no game). Ask students what kind of problem Bonk had and how the other Monsters helped to solve it. Ask why Bonk needed to have a problem before the others could help him (if he had been able to win the game by himself, there would have been no problem).
• Independent practice: Tell students to complete the Sequencing worksheet. Have them cut out the sentence strips and put the events in order. When finished, ask students to work with a partner to check each other's sequence of events. Tell them to refer to the book if their orders of events are different.
• Extend the discussion:

    Instruct students to use the last page of their book to draw a picture of a team sport they like to play. Have students share their pictures with the group.

Phonemic Awareness: Orally segmenting s-blends

• Say the word star and then segment the word into its sounds: /s/ /t/ /ar/. Have students repeat the sounds.
• Explain to students that you are going to say some words, and that you want them to segment the words into their individual sounds, just like you did with the word star. Say the following words, one at a time, while students segment the sounds: stew (/s/ /t/ /oo/), stamp (/s/ /t/ /a/ /m/ /p/), sport (/s/ /p/ /ôr/ /t/), snap (/s/ /n/ /a/ /p/), snob (/s/ /n/ /o/ /b/), smell (/s/ /m/ /e/ /l/), skate (/s/ /k/ /a/ /t/
• Click here for a Read-Aloud Book: A Super Special Soup. (Unfamiliar vocabulary words such as stew, simmer, stock, squid, Spanish, Swedish, and Scottish will need to be addressed before reading the book to the students.) Have students listen as you read the book for words with s-family blends.

Phonics: Sc and st blends

• Write the words star, snack, and score on the board and read them with the students. Underline the st and sc, and explain that these letters stand for the /st/, /sn/, and /sc/ sounds. Ask students to repeat the words.
• Write the blends on the board: st, sn, sc. Next to the blends, write the following portions of words in a list: ___ick, __ip, ve__, fi__, __amp, __ort, __arf, __at. Provide the following clues and ask students to decide which s–-blend goes at the beginning of the word: a skinny piece of wood from a tree (stick); what scissors do when they cut (snip); a sleeveless piece of clothing a person wears over a shirt (vest); a closed hand (fist); what is put on a letter to mail it (stamp); what pigs do (snort); what you wear around your neck or head when it is very cold (scarf); what you say to a cat that you want to go away (scat).
• Give students the S-blend worksheet, go over the example provided, and tell students to complete the worksheet.

    Tell students to circle each word in the story that has sc, sn, or st (star, steal, Snag, score).

Grammar, Mechanics, and Usage: Verbs as action words

• Review with students that action words tell things people or animals do, like playing or talking.
• Direct students to page 4. Ask students to find an action word on this page (watch, kicks, dribbles). Ask students to tell who watches (Uzzle, Lurk, Snag) and who kicks and dribbles (Bonk).
• Reinforce by directing students to page 5 and asking them to find the word that tells what Uzzle, Lurk, and Snag do when Bonk says he doesn’t need a team (frown, cross [their arms]).
• Have students work in pairs. Give each pair a page, 7, 9, or 11, and have them find all the action words on that page.

Vocabulary: Verb endings -s and -es

• Direct students to the third sentence on page 6. Read the sentence and ask students to find the word that tells what Bonk does by himself (plays). Explain that the word play is an action word. Ask students to explain what an action word is (it tells something that a person or thing does).
• Direct students to page 9. Ask them to find the action word that tells what happens when Bonk shoots the ball into the goal (the goalie catches it). Write the word catches next to the word plays. Circle the -s ending in plays and the -es ending in catches.
• Explain that when an action word ends with the letters s, ss, ch, or sh, such as in the word catch, the letters -es are added to the end of the word to make it plural.
• Write the following sentences on the board and have students tell you which spelling of the word is correct:

He (throws, throwes) the ball.
He (passes, passs) the ball.
He (steales, steals) some water.
Lurk (watchs, watches) the game.
Snag (catches, catchs) the ball.

• Give students the -s and -es Ending worksheet and explain the example.

Independent Reading

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

Home Connection

• Give the students their books to take home to read with parents, caregivers, siblings, or friends.

Writing

• Work with students to develop of list of characteristics for good team players. Then have pairs of students select a characteristic and create a poster for it. Display the students’ posters on a bulletin board titled "We Are Team Players!"

Science Connection

• Discuss what happens to a person's body when playing a game. Talk about heart rate, respiration, adrenaline, energy used (calories burned), and endorphins. If possible, ask the physical education teacher or an exercise physiologist to speak to the students. Help the students compare and contrast the physiological differences that occur with different types of team sports (i.e., tennis doubles vs. singles, soccer vs. baseball).

Monitor students to determine if they can:

• sequence story events in logical order and understand the importance of sequence in a story.
• orally segment sounds in words.
• associate st and sc with the phonetic elements /st/ and /sc/.
• recognize action words.
• identify verbs with inflectional endings -s and -es and add -s and -es.