Build Background

• Have students tell what they know about horseshoes and good luck. Ask if they’ve ever heard that a horseshoe hanging above a doorway brings good luck to a home. Explain that this is a superstition. (In parts of the UK, a horseshoe must be hung with the sides pointing up so the luck does not run out.) Ask students to name a few other superstitions. (An apple a day keeps the doctor away. It is bad luck to walk under a ladder. Step on a crack, break your mother’s back. Four-leaf clovers bring good luck.)

Preview the Book

Introduce the Book

• Give students a copy of the book and have them preview the front and back covers and 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).
• Show students the table of contents and explain that the chapter titles give clues about the contents of the book. For example, ask students what they expect to read about in the chapter titled, "Leaving Home." Have them look at the next two chapter titles and ask what they think these chapters might be about (living near the sea for the summer).

Introduce the Strategy: Visualize

• Tell students that good readers often visualize, or picture in their minds, what a book might be about before they begin reading. Visualizing is based on prior knowledge and experiences. Visualizing is also based on predicting what might happen next. This strategy helps readers understand and remember what they read.
• Model using the strategy of visualizing.
• Think-aloud: When I first glanced at the front cover of this book, I thought the setting was the late 1800s because of the brick street, the horse-drawn carriage, the tandem bicycle, and the style of the houses. When I look closer at this illustration, I notice the bicyclists are dressed in modern clothing and sneakers. The back cover shows a beach scene, so I am visualizing a Victorian beach town. I predict that someone collects or plays horseshoes. Since there are horse-drawn carriages, perhaps the story will be about one of these horses. I’ll have to read the book to find out what horseshoes have to do with the story.
• Ask students to preview the rest of the book, including the illustrations.
• 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 about 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 a word. They can look for base words within words, prefixes, and suffixes. They can use the context to work out meanings of unfamiliar words.
• Model how to apply word-attack strategies. For example, write the word seashore on the board and direct students to page 4 to find the word in the text. Review or explain that this word is made up of two smaller words that students are probably familiar with (sea and shore). Remind students that a word made up of two smaller words is called a compound word. By thinking about the meaning of each smaller word, students can guess that seashore probably refers to the shore of a sea or ocean. Students can also use context clues in the sentence containing the unfamiliar word, or in preceding sentences, to figure out the unfamiliar word. Tell students that they can check the meaning of the word by looking it up in a dictionary.
• Remind students to check whether words make sense by rereading the sentence.
• Have students turn to the glossary on page 20. Have them read the glossary words and their definitions aloud. Next, have students turn to the pages indicated and read the sentence in which the glossary word appears. Use context clues in the surrounding sentences to work out unfamiliar vocabulary words, as necessary.
• For additional tips on teaching word-attack strategies, click here.

Set the Purpose

• Have students read the book, remembering to visualize the characters and events in their minds as they read.

Student Reading

    Guide the reading: Review or explain that this story is written in the first-person narrative style. The author is retelling events as if they actually happened. Have students read pages 4 through 7. Tell them to underline the information that tells about the setting, the names of the characters, and any important events. If they finish before everyone else, they can go back and reread.

• Have students tell what they underlined. Ask students to tell where the story took place. Discuss how the illustrations provide additional information about the setting and characters. Have students tell the major events in the story.
• Use the information generated above to model visualizing.
• Think-aloud: I have been to a train station and have ridden on a train, so I can visualize how the child felt when the train rocked and swayed. By looking at the illustrations and imagining the author’s words, I can visualize the beach town, Gram’s house, the brightly colored flowers, and the ocean view from the child’s window. I can almost smell the salty, fishy air.
• Remind students, as they read the remainder of the book, to visualize the characters and 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 marked in their books. Use this opportunity to model how they can read these words using decoding strategies and context clues.
• Reinforce that visualizing while reading keeps them actively involved in the reading process and helps them understand and remember what they have read.

Teach the Comprehension Skill: Identify fact and opinion

• Discussion: Ask students to tell about visiting grandparents, visiting an aquarium such as Sea World, or vacationing near a lake or ocean. Write a few of their statements on the board. Then ask if these statements are facts or opinions.
• Introduce and model the skill: Review or explain that many stories include facts and opinions. Explain that one of the ways to evaluate written material is to recognize the difference between statements based on fact and statements based on opinion. An opinion tells how a person feels about something. You can agree or disagree with an opinion. A fact, on the other hand, can be verified or proven. Say: I like baseball. This is an opinion because it’s how I feel. Say: The Boston Red Sox won the 2004 World Series. This is a fact because I can prove it is true.
• Check for understanding: Tell students to turn to page 4, the introduction. Ask a student to read the first sentence aloud. Then ask if this sentence is a fact or an opinion (opinion: best summers). Ask another student to read the next sentence aloud and tell whether it is a fact or an opinion (fact).
• Think-aloud: When I read the third sentence, I asked myself whether it was a fact or an opinion. Obviously Gram did live in a house at the seashore. The problem with this sentence is the adjectives big and old. These two words are opinions. What if the person reading this book lives in a fifteenth-century castle in England? Then Gram’s house would not be big or old.
• Independent practice: Have students complete the identify facts and opinions worksheet. If a statement is a fact, students should "prove it" by writing the page number from the book where the information is found. Discuss student responses.

Grammar and Mechanics: Past-tense verbs

• Review or explain that adding -ed to a verb forms the past tense of a regular verb. Write the words push and rush on the board. Ask volunteers to write the past tense of the verbs (pushed, rushed).
• Review or explain that -ed is not used to form the past tense of an irregular verb. Tell students that the past tense of an irregular verb is formed either by leaving the verb as is or by changing the spelling. Write the words take and say on the board. Explain that these are the present-tense forms of the verbs and use each word in a sentence. For example: I take a taxi to the train station. I say my name. Ask students to tell how they would change each irregular verb to past tense (took, said). Remind students that they can usually tell if the past tense of a verb can be formed by adding -ed by saying the word softly to themselves to hear whether or not the word sounds correct. For example, the words lived and loved sound correct. The words taked and sayed do not.

   Check for understanding: Have students turn to the last paragraph on page 6 in the book and underline the past-tense irregular verbs. Have them circle any regular verbs that indicate the past tense with -ed added to them. Write their answers on the board and discuss the present and past tense of each word (irregular: were, had, told; regular with -ed: looked, cooked, stayed, faced).

• Independent practice: Have students complete the past-tense verbs worksheet. Discuss their answers.

Word Work: Homophones and homographs

• Review or explain that many of the words in this book are homophones and homographs. Tell students that words pronounced alike but spelled differently that have different meanings are called homophones (or homonyms). Words that are spelled the same and have different meanings are called homographs. These words may be pronounced differently.
• Check for understanding: Ask students to find the homophone in the first sentence on page 5 (I). Write I on the board. Write the word eye beside it. Ask students to say the words and tell what they mean. Have students read the first sentence in the second paragraph. Tell students there are four homophones in this sentence. Ask students to tell you the words, write them on the board with their homophones, and discuss the various meanings (for, four, fore; more, moor; hour, our; new, knew) Tell students to reread the first paragraph looking for homographs (spend, kid, bit). Write the words on the board. Have students tell the meaning of each word as it is used in the book. Ask students to tell you other meanings for the words and use them in sentences.
• Independent practice: Have students complete the homophones and homographs worksheet.

Independent Reading

• Allow students to read their books independently or with a partner. Encourage repeated timed readings of a specific section of the book. Additionally, partners can take turns reading parts of the book.

Home Connection

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

Writing and Art Connection

• Ask pairs of students to write a descriptive paragraph about the child, Gram, or Jim. Have them use adjectives to describe the character. These may be from the book or as they visualized the character while reading. Their paragraph should tell what the character looked like, how he/she dressed, how he/she acted, and any special talents or abilities he/she had. Have students illustrate their paragraphs and share them with the group.

Science Connection

• Provide print and Internet resources for students to research bottom dwellers. Divide students into groups and assign the topics found. Tell students to make a poster or write a report on the bottom dweller, including where the creature lives, what it eats, size, coloring, enemies, etc. Have students report their findings to the class.

Monitor students to determine if they can:

• use the strategy of visualizing to understand and remember a fictional story
• understand and identify facts and opinions in discussion and on a graphic organizer
• identify and use past-tense verbs to complete a worksheet
• understand and use homophones and homographs to complete a worksheet