Building Skills
Phonics
oa as in coal, road, roadway, loader, tugboat
Read the words aloud several times and have children repeat them together and individually. Review the use of these words in the book (coal, pages 4 and 12; loader, page 9; road, pages 6 and 9; roadway, page10; tugboat, page 13). Review these sentences and have individual children read aloud. Give other examples of phonic oa words (such as foam, coach, goal, soak, toast, groan). Have children brainstorm for other oa words. Post the list for several days in the classroom and encourage children to independently add to the list. Or children may start a small phonics notebook, which encourages them to jot down words as they read. At the end of the week review all the words.
Word Work
Adjectives
Use page 8 and have children identify all the adjectives used to modify the word truck (giant dump truck, concrete truck, flatbed truck). Allow them to highlight or underline the words if you are not reusing the books, or alternatively, have them write the sentences on the board. Have them suggest a few examples of adjectives that they could use with truck (such as big truck, large truck, small truck, red truck, dirty truck, etc.).
Team competition oa
Divide the class into teams with 4–5 children per team. Instruct the teams to think of or write down as many adjectives that modify truck as they can in 5–6 minutes. To accomplish this, they may use all previous examples, the book, and a dictionary, and may talk about their ideas. The winning team has the longest list.
Antonyms
There are a number of words in the book that lend themselves to the study of antonyms:
big, work, easy, small, smaller, simple, heavy, tall, large, deep, huge, out, giant, above, up, smooth, flat,
pull, massive, high, long. You may review a few of these words in the book. The more difficult ones may be simple (page 5), deep (pages 7, 11), massive (page 14), and smooth (page 10). Explain the idea of opposites to children and use a common example with some body language to help them guess the answer. Ask: What is the opposite of tall? Fat? Other antonym possibilities: hot, inside, left, wrong, good, sweet, awake, give, happy, top, first, far, slow, poor, stop.
Antonym partner search
Give every child a slip of paper with one of the words from the antonym list (make sure the antonyms are evenly paired). Have children stand, walk around the class, and talk to classmates until they locate their antonym partner. Next, the partners sit together and each makes a sentence using his or her word. Let the partners stand up together and give words and sentences. Alternatively, the partners stand up together, say antonyms aloud, then reread the book together.
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