Text Type: Fiction/Realistic
Page Count: 8
Word Count: 937

Book Summary
Chili Pepper Powder Surprise is a story about Trisha and her first experience with a thoroughbred horse. She is visiting her cousin Adrian's farm in Tennessee from Chicago, and she's never seen anything as beautiful as the horse. Adrian dares her to get on the horse without his father's knowledge, and she reluctantly decides to give it a try. Suddenly, she and Pepper are racing dangerously out of control, and she has to think quickly to keep from getting seriously injured. Illustrations support the text.

About the Lesson

Targeted Reading Strategy

• Summarize

Objectives

• Use the reading strategy of summarizing to understand nonfiction text
• Analyze characters in the text
• Identify and understand the use of possessive pronouns
• Identify and use homophones

Materials

• Book -- Chili Pepper Powder Surprise (copy for each student)
• Chalkboard or dry erase board
• Dictionaries
• Analyze characters, summarize, possessive pronouns, homophones 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: corral, dodging, galloping, gingerly, grazed, mane, saddle, sidestepped, stammered, stirrup, terrifyingly, tethered, thoroughbred, trot

Build Background

• Ask students if they've ever ridden a horse or watched someone else ride one. Encourage them to share their experiences. Discuss why people might want to own a horse.
• Explain that caring for a horse takes a lot of time and energy, and the person who owns it needs to provide adequate space, shelter, food, and attention. Ask students to share their opinions and/or desires for caring about their own horse.

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 kind of book it is (genre, text type, fiction or nonfiction, and so on) and what it might be about.
• Preview the title page. Talk about the information on the page (title of book, author's name, illustrator's name).

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 chapter or 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 page 3 aloud to students and model summarizing.
  Think-aloud: To summarize, I need to decide which information is most important to remember in a section. To do this, I can consider who and what the section was about, what happened, and when and why it happened. Then I can organize that information into a few sentences. This page is mostly about two kids named Trisha and Adrian admiring a beautiful thoroughbred horse. I will write thoroughbred horse under the heading What, and Trisha and Adrian under the heading Who. Trisha was excited because she had never seen a horse before. I will write never seen a horse under the heading Why. When I organize all of this information, a summary of the first page might be: Trisha and Adrian were admiring the beautiful thoroughbred horse. Trisha was excited because she had never seen a horse before.
• 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: Analyze characters

• Explain that there are many ways to learn about a character in a story. One way is to examine a character's words or thoughts. Another way is to examine the actions of the character. Explain to students that an author uses a character's words, thoughts, and actions to give the reader insight into a character's personality, relationships, motivations, and the conflicts he or she may face.
• Ask students to return to page 3. Model how to analyze a character based on his or her actions.
  Think-aloud: As I read page 3, I found out that Adrian is showing Trisha his thoroughbred horse. Trisha is visiting from Chicago. Adrian asks Trisha if she would like to see the horse walk around. Based on these clues, Adrian appears to be very friendly and a good host. This information provides insight into Adrian's personality.
• Have students reread page 3. Discuss what Trisha's actions reflect about her personality (appreciative, observant).
• Introduce and explain the analyze characters worksheet. Have students write the information from the discussion on their worksheet.

Introduce the Vocabulary

• As students preview the book, ask them to talk about what they see in the illustrations. Reinforce the vocabulary words they will encounter in the text.
• Write the following content vocabulary words on the board: thoroughbred, tethered, stirrup, and galloping.
• Explain to students that most of the time, good readers 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. Have a volunteer read the definition for thoroughbred in the dictionary. Have students follow along on page 3 as you read the sentence in which the word thoroughbred is found to confirm the meaning of the word.
• Point to the word thoroughbred on the board. Reread the definition of thoroughbred in the dictionary. List examples of sports that use thoroughbreds in them, such as equestrian jumping and horseracing.
• Have students locate each of the remaining content vocabulary words listed on the board in the dictionary. Read and discuss their definitions as a class.
• For tips on teaching word-attack strategies, click here.

Set the Purpose

• Have students read the book to find out more about Trisha and Adrian, stopping after every few pages to summarize the story in their mind.

Student Reading

• Guide the reading: Have students read from page 4 to the end of page 5. Encourage those who finish before others to reread.
• Model summarizing important information from page 4.
  Think-aloud: I made sure to stop reading after the second page of the story to quickly 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. On this page, I read that Adrian let the horse out of its stall, even though Trisha felt uncomfortable about it. I underlined unlatched the horse's stall and before Trisha could protest. I read that Trisha just froze as Adrian handed her the leather straps, and that Pepper did not want the saddle Adrian was trying to place on his back but finally gave in. Then I read how Adrian dared Trisha to get on Pepper. I will also underline the words Trisha froze, avoided the saddle, finally submitted, and dared Trisha to get on in the book.
• Write the underlined information on the chart on the board. Have students share any additional information they identified 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. (Adrian unlatched the horse's stall and led him out, even though Trisha was uncomfortable and thought they might be doing something wrong. She froze as Adrian handed her the leather straps to hold Pepper and watched as the horse tried to avoid the saddle. Adrian finally got the saddle on the horse and dared Trisha to get on.)
• Discuss with students the meaning of the words careful and obedient. Based on the information read so far, ask students why Trisha might be considered careful and obedient. (She asked Adrian if he was supposed to let Pepper out; she said "no way" when Adrian dared her to get on the saddle.) Encourage students to write this information in the Traits section of their analyze characters worksheet. Then have them write clues from the text that support their answers on their worksheet ("Trisha froze, feeling as if she was tethered?"; "Are?are we supposed to let him out?"; and so on). Ask students to think of other words they might use to describe Trisha.

      Check for understanding: Have students read page 5. Ask them to underline information that answers the questions who, what, when, where, and why while reading. When students have finished reading page 5, have them work with a partner to identify the important information they underlined (Who: Trisha, Adrian, and Pepper; What: Trisha got on Pepper's saddle; Why: She was sick of Adrian always teasing her and thought his dad wouldn't find out.). Have them work together on a separate piece of paper to create a summary of the page. Point out that sometimes not all of the questions (who, what, when, where, and why) are answered on each page. Instruct students to write the summary of the page.

• Ask students to explain how Trisha's personality is different from Adrian's. Discuss how they are both curious, but perhaps in different ways. (Trisha is cautious and unsure about taking the horse out, while Adrian is aggressive and sneaky.) Encourage students to write the information from the discussion in the Traits section of their analyze characters worksheet. Then have them write clues from the text that support their answers on their worksheet ("if you're sure your dad won't get mad; "Not if he doesn't know about it"; and so on). Have students share the text clues they found.

      Have students read the remainder of the book. Have them underline information in the story 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.

• 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.

Reflect on the Reading Strategy

      Divide students into pairs. Have them discuss the information they underlined on pages 6, 7, and 8. Have them write who, what, when, where, or why in the margin next to each underlined piece of information. Have them discuss whether each piece of information they underlined is important for a summary of these pages.

• Think-aloud: I know that summarizing keeps me actively involved in what I'm reading and helps me remember what I've read. I know that I will remember more about this story because I summarized as I read the book.
• Independent practice: Introduce and explain the summarize worksheet. Have students summarize the final pages on their own. Invite volunteers to read their summaries aloud once everyone has finished their work.

Reflect on the Comprehension Skill

• Discussion: Review the characteristics of Adrian that students identified from the first page of the story and those written in the first section of the chart on the board (friendly, hospitable). Review other character traits later identified as Adrian's (aggressive, sneaky, and so on). Discuss how different these traits are and how people have complex personalities.
• Independent practice: Have students complete the analyze characters worksheet, finishing their character trait analysis of Adrian, Trisha, and her uncle. Remind them to give examples from the text to support each trait they have listed. If time allows, discuss their responses.
• Enduring understanding: In this story, Trisha feels pressured by a dare from her cousin and ends up in a dangerous situation. Now that you know this information, why is it important to stand up for yourself and speak your mind when someone is pressuring you to do something you don't think is right?

Grammar and Mechanics: Possessive pronouns

• Explain or review that a pronoun is a word used in place of a noun. Point out that some examples of pronouns are I, he, it, they, and we. Write the following sentence on the board: He put the saddle on Pepper. Ask a volunteer to replace the words the saddle with a pronoun. (He put it on Pepper.)
• Write the following sentence on the board: Trisha's foot was tangled in the stirrup. Read the sentence aloud, pointing to the word foot. Ask a volunteer to explain whose foot the sentence is referring to (Trisha's). Explain that the word Trisha's shows that the foot belongs to Trisha. Review or explain that words like Trisha's are called possessive nouns. A possessive noun is formed by adding an 's to the end of a word to show ownership, or possession.
• Tell students that possessive pronouns are pronouns that show possession. Examples of possessive pronouns are: my, mine, yours, his, hers, its, our, and their. Point to the sentence on the board again: Trisha's foot was tangled in the stirrup. Ask a volunteer to come up to the board and change Trisha's to the appropriate possessive pronoun (Her) and read the sentence aloud. (Her foot was tangled in the stirrup.)
• Discuss the reason why authors use pronouns in the place of nouns (to make the writing flow better, to avoid repeating the same words, to make the paragraph sound better, and so on).

      Check for understanding: Have students write a list of possessive pronouns on the inside front cover of their book. Have them work with a partner to find and highlight all of the possessive pronouns in the book. Then have students write the noun that stands for each possessive pronoun next to its possessive in the text. Discuss their responses when finished.

• Independent practice: Introduce, explain, and have students complete the possessive pronouns worksheet. When students have finished, review their answers aloud. 

Word Work: Homophones

• Have students turn to page 4. Read the following sentence aloud: His saddle's right over here; you wanna see how it looks on him? Write the word here on the board. Ask students to explain what the word here means (in a certain place).
• Read the following sentence aloud: She could hear her uncle holler as he ran from the house. Write the word hear on the board. Ask students to explain what the word means (to listen with your ears).
• Ask students to identify which words in the sentences sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings (hear, here). Write these words on the board. Explain to students that words that sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings are called homophones.
• Write the homophones see/sea and blue/blew on the board. Have students use each word in a sentence on a separate piece of paper. Invite them to share their sentences aloud.
• Check for understanding: Point out to students the word no in the last paragraph on page 4. Instruct them to circle the word no and to write its homophone pair, know, in the margin to the right. Ask students to use each word in an oral sentence.
• Independent practice: Introduce, explain, and have students complete the homophones worksheet. Review answers aloud when students finish working independently.

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.

Realistic Fiction Writing Connection
Have students write a story about a character who faces a situation in which he or she is being pressured to do something that is wrong. Have them explain the situation and what the character does to solve this problem. Invite students to share their stories when finished.

Visit Writing A–Z for a lesson and leveled materials on realistic fiction writing.

Science Connection
Provide print and Internet resources for students to research thoroughbred horses. Have them find out the characteristics of thoroughbreds, why they are so special, and how they compare with other types of horses. Ask students to find out about the different ways thoroughbreds are used, what their physical and dietary requirements are, and what their owners do to take special care of them.

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.