Ask and say: What do you see on the cover? What do you think this story is about? What do the illustrations tell you about the kind of text this is? Share with the group anything else you can infer from the illustrations or title. 

Build Background
You will want to offer suggestions for eliciting prior knowledge and building background. Provide questions that get to what the child already knows about the topic. What do they know about colonial life?

Ask: What does colonial mean? Think about your day-what you do when you wake up in the morning until you go to bed at night. Do you think kids have always lived like that? How do you think life was different for your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents? 

Using the worksheet
Introduce and explain the second worksheet. Have children fill out the Want to Know section, which also helps set the purpose for finding information and main points. Have them work on the worksheet as they read through each section of the text. 

Book Walk
While doing your book walk, go through as much of the book as you feel necessary, pointing out things that will challenge children as they read. Look at the pictures with children and discussing what they see. You may want to write down some of the words they suggest. This step helps reduce the anxiety that some children feel when they are faced with a book that has unfamiliar text.

Cover and title page
Say and ask: This book is about colonial life. Is it fiction or fact? (fact) How can we tell from the first few pages? (Headings, illustrations with labels, etc.) Is this book about the present or the past? (past) How can we tell? (By use of the word colonial; you may need to discuss the meaning of this word. Also by the photographs showing how people dressed. By looking through the Introduction.)

Say and ask: It looks like there is a lot of information about colonial life here. How can we make sure we understand and remember as much as possible? (Stop and summarize after each page, recalling the important facts and connecting them with what we already know about colonial life, and then making comparisons between life then and now.)  

Reading Strategies
Remind children to use any or all of the following strategies to help them in their reading.

• How will the pictures help you understand the text?
• How does what you read connect to what you already know?
• What can you do if you don't understand a part you just read? Reread any sentence or page that was difficult to make sure that you understand the text.

Ask children about the strategies they think they will use if they get to a difficult word. You may want to act as a role model to show them how it might look or sound as they are reading. Pretend to read, getting confused or slowed down because you are not understanding a part. Model a strategy to help yourself gain meaning through rereading, asking questions, and looking at illustrations or diagrams. 


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