Teacher-Led Reading Instruction | Small Group
Elephants (Amazing Animals)
Summary & Standards Wonderful photographs provide information about these huge, peaceful plant eaters. Children will use information from the the text and photos, and their prior knowledge, to make inferences. Author: Kate Riggs
Word Count: 250+ Themes/Ideas: identifying animal characteristics; connecting folklore to the natural world
Genre: Informational Text Text Type: Picture Book
Genre/Text Type Informational Text/Picture Book Remind children that informational text has facts about a topic. This picture book includes photos to inform the reader. Informational Text Features Definitions Footnotes provide definitions for difficult words. Captions Short captions add information about the pictures. Vocabulary Academic Vocabulary continents (p. 4): Earth’s seven main spans of land wild (p. 4): not tame Domain-Specific Vocabulary hyenas (p. 15): large dog-like animals jungles (p. 11): land in warm areas covered with forests Challenging Features Text Metric conversions and pronunciation guides appear in parentheses. Point these out and explain their purpose. Content A fable is retold at the end of the book and departs from the informational nature of the text. Supporting Features Text Most pages include only one paragraph, focused on a main idea. The text is large and is surrounded by plenty of white space. Vocabulary Children will find it helpful to see the key words defined on the same page.
A First Look Read the title and show the front cover. Ask: Why do you think this book is part of a series called Amazing Animals ? What do you think is amazing about the elephant shown on the cover? Show children a map and point out sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia. Explain that elephants can be found in the wild in these places. Ask: What do you expect to read about in a book about elephants? Read and Analyze Informational Text Explain that some books have one main idea, but each page within the book might also have its own main idea. Sometimes a sentence on a page will tell a main idea, but other times, readers might have to read carefully to figure out the main idea. (p. 11) What is the information on this page about? Is there a sentence that states the main idea? (p. 12) What idea did the author write about on this page? Is there a sentence that states the main idea? Cite Textual Evidence Determine the Main Idea (p. 19) This page doesn’t have a sentence that tells the exact main idea. Read the page. What details can help you figure out the main idea? (p. 20) Can you tell the most important idea of the entire book in one sentence?
96 Scholar Zone Summer: Reading & Writing
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