Build Background

• Have students share what they know about Santa Claus. Create a word web on the board and have students brainstorm words they associate with Santa. Refer back to this web after students have read the book to check off words that are in the story and to add other words.
• For students whose culture does not include Santa, read or retell a story that will introduce the idea. You can also use pictures to stimulate the brainstorming activity. Reinforce the idea that Santa doesn’t like to visit unless everyone is asleep. The idea of putting coal in the stockings of children who have not been good may not be familiar to some students. Reference some stories about Santa that mention this tradition.

Preview the Book

Introduce the Strategy: Make, revise, and confirm predictions

• Show students the book and have them look at the front and back cover illustrations and read the title. Ask students who they think is holding the flashlight in the cover illustration. Ask them what they think is happening.
• Give students the Prediction worksheet and have them use the first column to write what they think might happen in the story.
• Give students their copies of the book. Have them preview the pictures up through page 12. Ask them to revise or confirm their predictions in the second column of the worksheet.
• Think aloud: When I read a new book, I look at the cover information first and ask myself what kind of book I think this will be. I ask myself whether it is a story or a fact book. If I recognize the characters from other books I have read, I use what I already know about them to guess how they might act in the new story. Then I preview the pictures to help me either revise my first predictions or make new ones. As I read, I continue to revise or confirm my predictions as I go. This helps me be an active reader and I enjoy and understand the story more when I make predictions.

Introduce the Vocabulary

• Review how to use other reading strategies, such as using what students know about word structures, to read unfamiliar words.
• Point out the word popcorn on page 3. Ask students how they might figure out this word if they don’t know it. Point out that it is a compound word. Students might recognize the two smaller words that make up the compound word: pop and corn. They could use the smaller words as clues to the meaning of the larger word. Read the sentence and ask students if the word popcorn makes sense.
• For additional teaching tips on reading and word-attack strategies, click here.

Set the Purpose

• Have students read the book to see if their predictions about the story are correct. Remind them to revise or confirm their predictions as they go.

Student Reading

• Guide the reading: Ask students to read to the end of page 6. Ask them if any of their predictions about the story are correct. They can look at their predictions on the worksheet and check off those that are correct or revise those they would like to change.
• Ask students to read to the end of the story. Remind them to use word structure and context to read any unfamiliar words.
• As students read, monitor their reading and intervene to help them work out any words they find difficult.

    Tell 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 Reading Strategies

• Ask students what strategies they used to work out unfamiliar words. Have them tell you any places in the text that they have marked with a question mark, and suggest strategies they could use to work out the words.
• Ask students whether their predictions about the story were correct. Ask how making predictions helped them read the story. Have a student retell what happened in the story. Have students use the third column of the worksheet to write what actually happened in the story.

Comprehension: Sequencing

• Introduce and model: Remind students that all stories have a plot, which is the series of events that happen. Explain that the order of these events is important. Some things need to happen before other things happen, and some things even make other things happen, so they must happen in order for the story to make sense. Tell students that the order in which things happen in the story is called the sequence of events.
• Check for understanding: Reread the first page with students. Ask students what happens first. (Hang their stockings by the fire and wait for Santa.) Ask what is the second thing is that the Hoppers do. (They make popcorn.)
• Independent practice: Give students the Sequencing worksheet. Tell them that they will list the events of the story in the correct order on the worksheet. Tell them to include only the most important things that happened.
• Extend the discussion:

    Instruct students to use the last page of their book to draw a picture of and write about what they would like Santa to put in their stocking.

Phonics: Spellings for variant vowel long /a/

• Have students turn to page 3 and read the first paragraph. Challenge them to find two words that have the long /a/ sound (stay, awake). When students have found the words, write them next to each other on the board. Point out the spelling of the long /a/ sound in each word, and highlight the pattern by underlining it or writing it in a different color.
• Have students work with partners to find other long /a/ words on the page (tale, make, waited). Explain that the long /a/ sound can be spelled in different ways. Write the word waited on the board next to stay and awake. Ask students what spelling pattern the words tale and make have (a-consonant-e). Record the words under the word awake on the board.
• Have students work with partners to find other long /a/ words in the book. Have the pairs share their words and tell you where to record these words on the board. They will encounter another spelling pattern: sleigh. Write this word next to the other words on the board to set up another column.
• Have students practice reading long /a/ words with different spelling patterns on the Long /a/ worksheet.

Grammar, Mechanics, and Usage: Nouns

• Remind students that a noun names a person, place, or thing. Write these categories on the board in a row. Inform students that in some stories, the characters are animals. In a story in which animals talk and act like people, the animals can be put under the "person" category.
• Have students turn to page 3 to look for examples of nouns (Hoppers, stockings, fire, Santa Claus, Fluffy Tail, fairy tale, Floppy Ears, popcorn, Speedy Legs). As students find the nouns, have them tell you in which category the words should be. Point out the proper names and tell students that these need to be capitalized.
• Continue with other pages in the book.

Vocabulary: Compound words

• Remind students that compound words are words made from joining 2 or more words. Explain that some compound words can be open, which means the words are not connected. Show them the example of the compound word fairy tale on page 3.
• Tell students that compound words can also be closed, which means they are joined together, as in the word popcorn on page 3.
• Explain that some compound words are joined by hyphens. Write the word merry-go-round on the board as an example.
• Explain that knowing the meanings of the 2 smaller words can help students read and understand the compound word. Discuss how the meanings of the 2 smaller words in each of the above examples provide clues to the meaning of the compound word.
• Give students the Compound Words worksheet and have them find examples of compound words.

Independent Reading

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

Home Connection

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

Writing

• Have students write a letter to Santa, telling him what they want in their stocking.
• Provide a model template of a friendly letter on the board and encourage students to use the template as they write their letter.

Monitor students to determine if they can:

• sequence main events in the story.
• recognize spelling patterns for long /a/ and organize words according to their pattern.
• identify compound words and classify them according to type.
• identify and categorize nouns.