Text Type: Nonfiction/Informational
Page Count: 12
Word Count: 268

Book Summary
You may have seen a hippo in a zoo, but did you know that it has no hair? Animals, Animals is about some of the many fascinating animals in our world. Each page describes interesting facts and brings the wonderful world of animals to the reader. Detailed illustrations enhance the text.

Book and lesson also available at Levels E and H.

About the Lesson

Targeted Reading Strategy

• Connect to prior knowledge

Objectives

• Use the reading strategy of connecting to prior knowledge to understand nonfiction text
• Identify main idea and details
• Identify the long /i/ vowel sound
• Identify adjectives and the nouns they describe
• Understand the use of bold print

Materials

• Book -- Animals, Animals (copy for each student)
• Chalkboard or dry erase board
• Dictionaries
• Main idea and details, long /i/ vowel, adjectives worksheets
• Discussion cards

      Indicates an opportunity for students to mark in the book. (All activities may be demonstrated by projecting the book on interactive whiteboard or completed with paper and pencil if books are reused.)

Vocabulary

• Content words: camel(s), elephant(s), elk, fox, giraffes, gray, great, hippopotamus, kangaroo, leopards, polar bears

Build Background

• Ask students if they have ever been to a zoo or a wildlife park. Ask them to tell what kinds of animals they saw there and to name some of their favorites.
• Tell students that animals are like people in many ways. As is true with people, animals have exceptional, or special, things about them that we might not be able to know just by looking at them. Provide an example, such as: You may not know just by looking at me, but I am exceptionally good at ____. Ask students to share things that are special about them that someone may not be able to tell just by looking at them.
• Tell students that as they read the book, they may be reminded of interesting facts they already know about the featured animals, and they also may learn some interesting new details.

Preview the Book

Introduce the Book

• Give students their copy of the book. Guide them to the front and back covers and read the title. Have students discuss what they see on the covers. Encourage them to offer ideas as to what type of book it is (genre, text type, fiction or nonfiction, and so on) and what it might be about.
• Show students the title page. Discuss the information on the page (title of book, author's name).
• Ask students whether they are familiar with the animals they see on the covers and title page. Have them share any facts they already know about them. Then ask them to think about anything they may be curious about regarding the animals they see in the illustrations.

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 in a book. Remind them that they are more likely to understand what they are reading if they already know something about the topic. Tell students that as they read, they should think about their experience with the topic to make connections to the new information in the book.
• Model how to connect to prior knowledge.
  Think-aloud: As I look at the cover of this book, I notice that the illustration is of a leopard. I already know that leopards are one kind of big cat. In the large illustration, it looks as if the leopard is climbing a mountain. I predict that the book is going to tell me where animals, such as this leopard and the fox on the back cover, live. I may learn other new information about these and other animals, but the page on leopards will be easier for me to read because I can connect the new information with what I already know.
• 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 Comprehension Skill: Identify main idea and details

• Remind students that a main idea is the general topic of a book or the subject of a section of a book. Details are the extra facts or descriptions that give the reader more information.
• Explain to students that authors often give details about a topic to help the reader understand information that may be new to them. Providing details can help the reader picture the subject more clearly in his or her mind.
• Provide a simple model of identifying a main idea and detail. Draw a sample two-column chart on the board. Write the heading Person above the left column and the heading Detail above the right column.
• Model the skill of identifying main idea and details.
  Think-aloud: The topic, or main idea, of my chart is People. [Write your name in the first column and then write a detail about yourself, either physical or something about your personal preferences or talents.] The detail I listed will help you to know a little more about me and would help you form a more complete picture of me in your mind if you were to read the chart without looking at me.
• As a group, add student names to the list. Have each student provide a detail about him- or herself that may be new information to the class, and write it on the chart. Explain that after they read the book, students will make a similar chart that includes each animal, or the section's main idea, and details about the animals they read about.

Introduce the Vocabulary

• As you preview the book, ask students to talk about what they see in the illustrations and use the vocabulary they will encounter in the text. Model how to use what they know about various animals as they preview the illustrations.
• Reinforce new vocabulary by incorporating it into the discussion of the illustrations. For example, on page 3 you might say: The antlers on the elk remind me of large antlers on a deer.
• Model for students the strategies they can use to work out words they don't know. For example, point to the word antlers on page 3. Model using the familiar word part ant and the picture to read the word. Then read the sentence to students and ask if the word antlers makes sense.
• Model how students can use a dictionary to find a word's meaning. Have them locate the word antler(s) in the dictionary. Invite a volunteer to read the definition for antler. Have them compare this with their prior knowledge of the word.
• Have students follow along on page 3 as you read the sentence in which the word antlers is found to confirm the meaning of the word.
• For tips on teaching word-attack strategies, click here.

Set the Purpose

• Have students read the book to find out about various animals. Remind them to stop after every couple of pages to think about what they already know about animals, such as where they live and what they eat. Thinking about each animal will help them remember information when they have finished reading.

Student Reading

• Guide the reading: Give students their copy of the book, and have them put a sticky note on page 7. Tell them to read to the end of this page. Have students reread the pages if they finish before everyone else.
• When they have finished reading, ask students what words they had trouble with. Then have them point out the animals that were familiar to them. Have them tell how thinking about what they already knew about some of the animals helped them as they read. Have students tell about some of the new details and information they learned.
  Think-aloud: When I read about elk, I read that they have large antlers. I remembered a time when my family and I saw an elk as we were driving while we were on vacation. The elk had huge antlers. This helped me read the new word antlers. If I didn't already know about antlers, it might have been harder for me to understand that part of the book.
• Check for understanding: Have students share some of the things they thought about as they read information on the pages so far. Select volunteers to share connections they made between prior knowledge and the text. Ask other students to explain the details that helped them understand and picture the information.
• Have students read the remainder of the book. Encourage them to connect new information to their prior knowledge as they read. Explain that noting details about each animal will help them to remember and better understand what they read.

      Have students make a question mark in their book beside any word they do not understand or cannot pronounce. Encourage them to use the strategies they have learned to read each word and figure out its meaning.

• Ask students what words, if any, they marked in their book. Use this opportunity to model how they can read these words using decoding strategies and context clues.

Reflect on the Reading Strategy

• Ask students to share any examples of how connecting with their prior knowledge helped them. Reinforce how thinking about what they already know about the topic of the book helps them understand and remember what they read and keeps them actively engaged in the text.
• Think-aloud: When I came to page 7 and saw the illustration of the camel, it reminded me of when I went to a petting zoo and touched a camel. I even sat on its back and went for a ride! Thinking about this while I read made that section quite easy for me.
• Check student understanding by inviting them to share connections they made with the section on camels or any other section of the book.

Reflect on the Comprehension Skill

• Discussion: Ask students which animals they were already familiar with in the book. Invite them to share something they already knew about the animal(s) and something new that they learned. Ask if they thought about other animals as they read the book.
• Check for understanding: Explain to students that it helps them remember information they read in nonfiction books if they can organize the key facts on a graphic organizer. Give students their copy of the main idea and details worksheet. Explain that they can list all the animals they read about in the first column and details about the animals in the second column. When they have finished filling in the chart, they will have a summary of the key information in the book. Say: The first animal I read about was the elk. I will write this in the first column. I read that elk are in the deer family, they are excellent swimmers and can run very fast, and that males have large antlers. I will write elk in the column under Animal and in the deer family, good swimmers and runners, males have large antlers under Detail.
• Have students record the example on their worksheet.
• Check for understanding: Have students find the next animal in the book and tell some of the characteristics or key facts about that animal. If they are correct, have them write the information on their worksheet.
• Independent practice: Have students complete the main idea and details worksheet. Have them share their responses when they have finished.
• Enduring understanding: In this book, you read about some of the many fascinating animals in our world. Like people, animals come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. Each one is beautiful and special in its own way. There are animals all around us in nature, though sometimes we don't take the time to notice them or see the special things about them. The next time you are outside, find an insect or other animal in nature and really look at it. Ask yourself: What do I notice? Do I see something I've never seen before? Take time to appreciate all the beauty that nature and the animal world have to offer.

Phonics: Long /i/ vowel

• Write the word swine on the board and say it aloud with students. Tell them that the sound they hear in the middle of the word is the long /i/ vowel sound.
• Have students say the long /i/ sound aloud. Run your finger under the letters in the word as students say the whole word aloud. Write another word on the board, such as lime, and ask students to identify which letter represents the long /i/ sound.

        Have students look on page 8 and highlight or circle the word that has the long /i/ sound: unlike. Write the word on the board.

• Write the words by and my on the board. Tell students that these words also have the long /i/ sound. Ask students to identify the letter that makes the long /i/ sound in these words. Point out the different letters that stand for the long /i/ sound, including the consonant-vowel-consonant final e pattern and the letter y.

       Have students brainstorm other long /i/ words. Have students share in which spelling category each word belongs. Have students hunt the pages for any other words with the long /i/ sound and circle words found.

Independent practice: Introduce, explain, and have students complete the long /i/ vowel worksheet.

Grammar and Mechanics: Adjectives

• Review or explain to students that a noun is a person, place, or thing.
• Write the following words on the board: red hair. Draw a line under hair and explain that this is a noun, or a thing. Then draw a circle around red and explain that this is an adjective, or a describing word. The adjective gives information about the noun by describing it.
• Have students turn to page 4. Ask a volunteer to give a fact that tells something about the size of a giraffe (tall). Explain that the word tall is an adjective that describes a giraffe.
• Ask students to find the words long trunks on page 5. Write the words on the board. Have a volunteer circle the adjective (long) and draw a line under the noun it describes (trunks).

      Check for understanding: Have students go through the book, circling the adjectives and underlining the nouns they describe.

• Independent practice: Introduce, explain, and have students complete the adjectives worksheet.

Word Work: Bold print

• Explain or remind students that bold print means that something is written in darker print than the other words on the page. Have students turn to page 3 and ask them to locate an example of bold print (elk). Point out that the information on this page deals with the word in bold print.
• Tell students that bold print is most often used in nonfiction writing. Explain that bold print is a tool authors use to draw attention to a subject or feature on the page. Have students turn to page 4 to locate the word in bold print (giraffes). Point out that the information on this page relates to the word in bold print.
• Ask students to search the book for the word zebra and tell on which page it appears in bold print (page 9). Ask students if finding it was easy because of the bold print that was used. Explain that bold print is a useful tool readers can use when trying to locate information quickly about a subject in a book that deals with more than one topic.
• Check for understanding: Repeat the process by having students find the page on which page the word hippopotamus is discussed. Remind them to look for the word in bold print. Ask if they have seen bold print used in other places and if so, to share where and how it was used.

Independent Reading

• Allow students to read their book independently. Additionally, allow partners to 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. Have students practice identifying main idea and details as they read.

Informational Writing Connection
Have students research an animal not mentioned in the book. Ask them to find a little-known fact about the animal. Have them determine how the special attribute of the animal affects the way the animal lives, looks, moves around, and so on. Have students write what they learned about their chosen animal.

Visit Writing A–Z for a lesson and leveled materials on expository writing.

Art Connection
Have students use information they gathered in the Writing Connection activity to draw a picture of the animal they chose. Encourage them to include the special detail or attribute of their animal in their drawing.

Skill Review
Discussion cards covering comprehension skills and strategies not explicitly taught with the book are provided as an extension activity. The following is a list of some ways these cards can be used with students:

• Use as discussion starters for literature circles.
• Have students choose one or more cards and write a response, either as an essay or a journal entry.
• Distribute before reading the book and have students use one of the questions as a purpose for reading.
• Cut apart and use the cards as game cards with a board game.
• Conduct a class discussion as a review before the book quiz.