Build Background

• Ask students about their experiences hiking in the woods on nature walks. Encourage them to share what they enjoyed about being on such trips.
• Discuss what it means to enjoy nature responsibly (to respect wildlife, to pick up your trash, and so on.). Extend the discussion by reviewing hiking and camping safety rules (to always hike with a buddy, to tell somewhere where you'll be and when you'll be back, etc.)

Preview the Book

Introduce the Book

• Give students a copy of the book. Have them preview the front and back covers. Encourage them to read the title. Have students discuss what they see on the covers and offer ideas as to what kind of book this is and what it might be about.
• Show students the title page. Talk about the information on the page (title of book, author's name, illustrator's name).

Introduce the Strategy: Summarize

• Review how stopping to summarize what is happening in a book while reading is a strategy that good readers use to make sense of text.
• Model summarizing.
• Think-aloud: To summarize what I've read, I decide what's important and what isn't. Then, in my mind, I organize the important information into a few words or sentences and think about them a while. Then I try and retell the important information in my own words.
• As students read, they should use other reading strategies in addition to the targeted strategy presented in this section. For tips on additional reading strategies, click here.

Introduce the Vocabulary

• Remind students of the strategies they can use to work out words they don't know. For example, they can use what they know about letter and sound correspondence to figure out the word. They can look for base words, prefixes, and suffixes or other word endings. They can use the context to work out meanings of unfamiliar words.
• Model how to apply word-attack strategies. Have students find the word territory on page 8. Tell them to think about the letter the word begins with and then use what they know about syllables and vowels (one vowel sound per syllable) to sound out the word.
• Remind students that they should check whether a word makes sense by rereading the word in the sentence.
• For additional tips on teaching word-attack strategies, click here.

Set the Purpose

• Have students read the book to find out what Katie finds in the forest, stopping after every few pages to summarize the important information in their minds.

Student Reading

• Guide the reading: Have students read to the end of page 8. Encourage students who finish early to go back and reread.
• Model summarizing the story.
  Think-aloud: I made sure to stop after the first three pages to summarize what I'd read so far. I thought about Katie's nature collection and how she put flowers, acorns, and pinecones in her backpack as she walked along the trail.
• Tell students to read the remainder of the story. Remind them to think about what happens to the characters and why, so they can summarize the events in their minds.

    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 the Reading Strategies

• Ask students what words they might have marked in their books. Use this opportunity to model how they can read these words using decoding strategies and context clues.
• Have students share any other questions they had while they were reading. Discuss how summarizing as they read keeps them actively involved in the reading process and helps them understand and remember what they read.
• For practice with summarizing, have students complete the summarize worksheet.

Teach the Comprehension Skill: Identify author's purpose

• Discussion: Have students tell what they think the author's purpose was for writing Katie's Forest Finds.
• Introduce the skill: Write the following terms on the board: to inform, to entertain, to persuade. Invite students to define the terms in their own words. Encourage students to give examples of times they might have said something to inform, to entertain, or to persuade. Point out that writers often have one of these three purposes for writing.
• Invite students to find the author’s purpose for writing Katie’s Forest Find. Ask them to find examples that show the author’s purpose was to inform (pictures and definitions). Then have them find examples that show the purpose was to entertain (accept any answers students can justify), and to persuade (Example: "Feeding animals is bad for everyone," her father said.) Point out that a writer might have more than one purpose for writing a book. Ask students to discuss and decide what the author’s main purpose was for writing this book (to persuade people to enjoy nature responsibly).
• Check for understanding: Ask students to think of something they've read recently that taught them something (science book, biography, etc.). Ask them to think of something they've read that was funny, scary, silly, etc. (comics, fiction books). Ask students for an example of something they've read that was persuasive or convincing (an advertisement or poster).
• Independent practice: Have students complete the author's purpose worksheet. Discuss individual answers and ideas when everyone has finished working independently.
• Extend the discussion: Ask students if they think the author's message in Katie's Forest Finds was clear. Ask if they were persuaded to enjoy wildlife and nature responsibly.