Text Type: Nonfiction/Informational
Page Count: 16
Word Count: 938

Book Summary
Have you ever heard the saying, "Take it with a grain of salt"? This book explains the meaning of that expression, along with many other interesting facts about salt. Readers learn the composition of salt, where it comes from, why it's good for us, and its many uses.

About the Lesson

Targeted Reading Strategy

• Summarize

Objectives

• Use the reading strategy of summarizing to understand text
• Understand and identify cause-and-effect relationships
• Identify the long /e/ digraph ea
• Recognize and use different sentence types
• Identify and understand common idioms

Materials

• Book -- Salt Rocks! (copy for each student)
• Chalkboard or dry erase board
• Vocabulary, cause and effect, summarize, sentence types worksheets
• Discussion cards

      Indicates an opportunity for students to mark in the book. (All activities may be completed with paper and pencil if books are reused.)

Vocabulary

• Content words: crystals, dissolved, evaporate, grains, mine, mineral, mummies, preserve, seasoning, sodium

Build Background

• Show a salt shaker to students. Discuss what students already know about salt. Give each student a small portion in his or her hand to smell and taste (if possible). Ask volunteers to describe the smell and taste. Have them examine salt crystals under a magnifying glass or microscope and describe the shape.

Preview the Book

Introduce the Book

• Give students their copy of the book. Guide them to the front and back covers and read the title. Have students discuss what they see on the covers. Encourage them to offer ideas as to what type of book it is (genre, text type, fiction or nonfiction, and so on) and what it might be about.
• Show students the title page. Discuss the information on the page (title of book, author's name, illustrator's name).
• Ask students to turn to the table of contents. Remind them that the table of contents provides an overview of what the book is about. Ask students what they expect to read about based on what they see in the table of contents. (Accept all answers that students can justify.)
• Have students preview the rest of the book, looking at photos, captions, and other text features. Point out the boxes titled Salt Sayings on pages 7, 10, 12, and 14. Explain to students that these boxes provide additional information about salt.

Introduce the Reading Strategy: Summarize

• Explain to students that one way to understand and remember information in a book is to write a summary, or a brief overview, of the most important information in a section. Point out that a summary often answers the questions who, what, when, where, and why.
• Create a chart on the board with the headings Who, What, When, Where, and Why. Read pages 4 through 6 aloud to students and model summarizing.
  Think-aloud: To summarize, I need to decide which information is the most important to remember in a section. To do this, I can consider who and what the section is about, what happens, and when and why it happens. Then I can organize that information into a few sentences. This section is mostly about what salt is. The author explains that salt is a mineral made up of crystals. People need salt to live. I will write mineral, crystal, and need salt to live under What. The author says we need salt to make our muscles move, our blood flow, and our hearts beat. I will write these things under the heading Why. The text also says that sodium is another name for salt. When I organize all of this information, a summary of the introduction might be: Salt, otherwise known as sodium, is a mineral made up of tiny crystals. People need salt to keep their bodies healthy.
• Write the summary on the board. Discuss how you used the information in the chart along with your own words to create the summary.
• As students read, encourage them to use other reading strategies in addition to the targeted strategy presented in this section. For tips on additional reading strategies, click here.

Introduce the Comprehension Skill: Cause and effect

• Review or explain that a cause is an event that makes something happen, and the effect is what happens because of, or as a result of, the event. Create a two-column chart on the board with the headings Cause and Effect. Write the following sentence on the board under the heading Effect: I put on my hat.
• Model identifying cause-and-effect relationships.
  Think-aloud: I know that there are reasons, or causes, for events to happen. When I put on a hat, it might be because it is hot outside. The hat shades me from the sun and keeps me cool. So, a cause for putting on the hat might be because it is hot and I wanted to stay cool. However, I also sunburn easily. Since a hat shades my face from the sun, another cause, or reason, to put on a hat might be to prevent me from getting sunburned. Sometimes there is more than one cause associated with an effect.
• Ask students to identify from the discussion the two causes for putting on a hat (it is hot outside; to prevent sunburn). Write these under the heading Cause.
• Write each of the following sentences on index cards: I go to sleep; I am tired; I put on my coat; It is cold outside; I drink water; I am thirsty; I eat an apple; I am hungry. Mix up the cards and give each volunteer a card. Have volunteers find a match to their sentence on one of the other cards. Then have each person in the pair identify who has the cause and who has the effect. Ask the remaining students to explain whether or not the match and explanation are correct.

Introduce the Vocabulary

• Write the words from the glossary in a list on the chalkboard. Point to each word, read it aloud, and ask students to give the thumbs-up signal if they know the word or have heard it before. Circle any words with which most students are unfamiliar.
• Explain to students that good readers can use context clues to help figure out the meaning of an unfamiliar word in the text. However, sometimes they will not find enough context clues to clearly define the unfamiliar word. Model how students can use the glossary or a dictionary to locate a word's meaning.
• Ask students to take turns reading the glossary words and their definitions. After each definition has been read, have them turn to the page and find the sentence containing the word. Read the sentence aloud to confirm the definition.
• Introduce and explain the vocabulary worksheet. Allow time for students to play the game with a partner.
• For tips on teaching word-attack strategies, click here.

Set the Purpose

• Have students read the book to find out about salt. As they read, encourage students to underline information in each section that answers the questions who, what, when, where, and why.

Student Reading

• Guide the reading: Have students read from page 7 to the end of page 9. Encourage those who finish before others to reread the section.
• Model summarizing important information in the section titled "Don't Rub Salt in the Wound."
  Think-aloud: I made sure to stop reading at the end of the section to summarize what I'd read so far. First, I thought about the information that answered the questions who, what, when, where, and why. Then, in my mind, I organized the important information into a few sentences. In this section, I learned that salt was used to preserve food and keep it from spoiling because there were no refrigerators (why). People (who) put it on meat and soaked vegetables in it (what). I underlined no refrigerators, spoiling, meat, vegetables, and preserve. I also learned that people once tried to use salt to keep milk from spoiling, but that was a yucky mistake. However, from this mistake people learned how to make cheese (what). I underlined milk, going bad, mistake, and cheese.
• Write the underlined information in the chart on the board. Have students share any additional information they underlined that answers the questions who, what, when, where, and why. Write this information on the chart. Create a summary with students based on the information on the chart. (Before refrigerators or cans, salt was used to preserve food. People put it on meat and soaked vegetables in it. When people tried to preserve milk with salt, it did not work well. However, they learned how to make cheese.)
• Have students turn to page 7 in the book. Write putting salt on food under the heading Cause on the cause-and-effect chart on the board. Ask students to use the text to identify the effect of this event. (Food was preserved to eat later.) Write this information on the chart under the heading Effect.
• Ask students to identify any other effects that result from salt being put on food (food tastes better, helps make milk into cheese). Write these effects on the chart on the board.
• Introduce and explain the cause and effect worksheet. Ask students to write the information from the board on their worksheet.

      Check for understanding: Have students read pages 10 through 13. Remind them to underline information that answers the questions who, what, when, where, and why while reading. When students have finished reading, divide them into groups. Assign each group either the section titled "Salt of the Earth" or the section titled "Back to the Salt Mines." Have students work in their group to identify the important information they underlined. Ask students to write a summary of the chapter with their group. Discuss each group's summary aloud.

• Write the following cause on the board: Egyptians dried out a dead person's body with salt. Ask students to use the text to identify an effect of this cause (the salt preserved the body; Egyptians believed their loved one would rest in peace). Have them write this information on their cause and effect worksheet. Discuss their responses.

      Have students read the remainder of the book. Have them underline information in the section that answers the questions who, what, when, where, and why.

      Have students make a question mark in their book beside any word they do not understand or cannot pronounce. Encourage them to use the strategies they have learned to read each word and figure out its meaning.

Reflect on the Reading Strategy

• Ask students what words, if any, they marked in their book. Use this opportunity to model how they can read these words using decoding skills and context clues.

      Divide students into pairs. Have them discuss the information they underlined in the final section, "Are You Worth Your Salt?" Have them talk about why the information they underlined is important to a summary of the section. Have them write who, what, when, where, and why in the margins next to each of the corresponding underlined parts.

• Independent practice: Introduce and explain the summarize worksheet. Have students use the information they underlined to write a summary of "Are You Worth Your Salt?" Invite volunteers to read their summaries aloud once everyone has finished their work.

Reflect on the Comprehension Skill

• Discussion: Review with students the information on their cause and effect worksheet. Point out that some causes lead to more than one effect. Ask students to identify an event that happened as a result of salt becoming cheaper and easier to find. Have them write the cause and an effect on their worksheet.
• Independent practice: Write the following cause on the chart on the board: Salt makes it harder for water to freeze. Have students complete the cause and effect worksheet by identifying at least two effects for this cause. If time allows, discuss their responses.
• Enduring understanding: In this book, you learned many interesting facts about the salt. Now that you know this information, what will you think about the next time you reach for the salt shaker?

Phonics: Long /e/ vowel digraph ea

• Show students the word meat on page 7 of the text, and write it on the board. Say the word aloud.
• Point to the ea letter combination in the word. Explain to students that the letters e and a together represent the long /e/ vowel sound they hear in the middle of the word meat.
• Write the following sentence on the board: I read the book yesterday. Have students say the word read aloud. Point out that in this sentence, the ea vowel digraph in the word read does not make the long /e/ vowel sound.

      Check for understanding: Assign pairs of students to sections of the book. Have them locate and underline all words with the ea vowel digraph. Remind students that the ea digraph sometimes does not make the long /e/ vowel sound, such as in the word feather.

Grammar and Mechanics: Sentence types

• Review or explain that there are different types of sentences. Have students turn to page 5 and read the first sentence. Explain that this is a declarative, or telling sentence (it tells readers something). Write the word Declarative on the board. Have students put their finger on the punctuation mark at the end of the sentence. Review that a period signals the end of a declarative sentence.
• Explain to students that a command sentence also ends in a period, but it tells someone to do or not do something. Write the word Command on the board. Show students the following example from the Try This! box on page 11: Mix some salt into warm water and stir it.
• Direct students to the first sentence of the book on page 4. Review or explain that this is an interrogative sentence (it asks readers a question). Write the word Interrogative on the board. Have students put their finger on the punctuation mark at the end of the sentence. Review or explain that a question mark signals the end of an interrogative sentence. Read the sentence aloud to students, modeling the voice inflection used at the end of a question.
• Repeat this process for the exclamatory sentence at the end of the second paragraph on page 4. Write the word Exclamatory on the board.

      Check for understanding: Have students underline one declarative sentence, one command sentence, one interrogative sentence, and one exclamatory sentence in the book. Have them share aloud the sentences they underlined.

• Independent practice: Introduce, explain, and have students complete the sentence types worksheet. If time allows, discuss their answers.

Word Work: Idioms

• Write the following sentence on the board: When we won the game, I was on cloud nine. Ask students whether they have ever heard this expression before and what they think it means.
• Explain to students that on cloud nine is an example of an idiom. An idiom is a combination of words that has a different meaning from the true meaning of the words. For example, there is no such thing as a cloud nine, but it is a phrase that is accepted to mean being in a state of extreme happiness.
• Discuss with students that idioms often are specific to a language or a culture and often evolve through the history of the culture or country.
• Write the phrase hold your horses on the board. Discuss with students what they think this phrase means. Explain that the idiom means to stop and wait patiently for someone or something.
• Check for understanding: Have students reread the table of contents. Point out the section titles, "Take It with a Grain of Salt" and "Don't Rub Salt in the Wound." Ask students pairs to discuss what they think each idiom means. Invite pairs to share the meanings.

Independent Reading

• Allow students to read their book independently. Additionally, partners can take turns reading parts of the book to each other.

Home Connection

• Give students their book to take home to read with parents, caregivers, siblings, or friends. Have them discuss with someone at home how to summarize as they read each section in a book.

Informational Writing Connection
Provide print and Internet resources for students to research various spices and allow individuals or pairs of students to choose one spice to research further. Have them gather such information as: how it's grown, where it's grown, its history, surprising facts, and so on. Have students report their findings in a presentation format of their choice. Ask them to include an illustration of the plant that the spice originates from.

Visit Writing A–Z for a lesson and leveled materials on informational report writing.

Elements of Nonfiction Connection
Review with students the information in the Do You Know? box on page 6, Salt Sayings text boxes throughout the text, and the map on page 13. Discuss the purpose of incorporating these types of features in the book (to provide clarification and elaboration of the photographs and information on nearby pages; to draw conclusions about information presented in the main body of the text; to visualize locations referred to in the text; to make the information more engaging or entertaining). Ask students to explain why it might be beneficial to examine and understand these nonfiction elements in the text as they read. Then reread and discuss page 9 with them. Explain that the contents of the text box is a departure from the rest of the text but that it adds interesting information on the subject of salt.

Skill Review
Discussion cards covering comprehension skills and strategies not explicitly taught with the book are provided as an extension activity. The following is a list of some ways these cards can be used with students:

• Use as discussion starters for literature circles.
• Have students choose one or more card and write a response, either as an essay or a journal entry.
• Distribute before reading the book and have students use one of the questions as a purpose for reading.
• Cut apart and use the cards as game cards with a board game.
• Conduct a class discussion as a review before the book quiz.