Building Background

• If students have read other Hoppers books, ask them what they remember about the characters. What other adventures have the Hoppers had?
• Ask students if they have ever been camping. What was it like? Where did they sleep? What did they eat? What did they do? What was the weather like? How did the weather affect their trip? 

Preview the Book

• Show students the front and back covers of the book and have students read the title.
• Have students make predictions about what will happen in the book based on the illustrations. 

Introducing the Vocabulary

• Have students turn to page 4 and look for the word "marshmallows." Allow students to use word-attack strategies to make guesses at the word. What treat might get soggy on a wet camping trip? What long food word begins with m? What sound chunks do they see in the word?
• Go over any other vocabulary words you feel may present problems, including comfortable (p. 6), cast (p.8), wriggling, and reel (both p. 11). 

Introducing the Comprehension    Skill: Identify and retell main events

• Introduce the idea of a plot. Tell students that the plot is the events that happen in the story; it usually doesn't include what the characters feel or say, but only what they actually do. A plot requires movement or action. Tell students that after they read, they will retell the main plot points of the story. They will also fill out a worksheet and list the main events. 

Set the Purpose
Have students read in order to find all of the main events in the story. Remind them to look for movement or action. 

Word-Attack Strategies
Remind students to use any or all of the following strategies when they come to unfamiliar words.

• 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.