Kindergarten - ELA
1: Letters
Unit 1: A - A Is for Musk Ox
Lesson 1
Day 1
After reading, students are asked why we have the alphabet and expected to answer that it is a way to communicate written messages, which requires describing the connection between the alphabet (an idea in the text) and its function. In Activity 2, students are asked to put letters in alphabetical order and discuss that this order helps people organize information, prompting them to connect the idea of alphabetical order to the purpose of organizing information. The optional extension has students place number cards beneath letters and discuss that both letters and numbers have a specific order, prompting students to describe the connection between two related pieces of information (letters and numbers).
Lesson 2
Day 2
Activity 1 asks students to read and watch information about musk oxen and then discuss how the information the adult shares compares with what the musk ox in the story says about his species. The activity directs discussion of specific pieces of information (where musk oxen live, what they eat, how people use them, and threats they face) and introduces the vocabulary word "herd," explaining the connection between the idea of a herd and musk oxen living together. Activity 3 prompts students to act based on what they learned about musk oxen, tying their knowledge to behavior and interpretation.
Lesson 3
Day 3
Students are asked to find marked words in the book, point to the first letter of each word, and find the picture that corresponds to that word in the illustration. Students are prompted at H to explain what "herd" means and to discuss why the definition (a large group of animals that live together) fits the context. Students are asked to connect the meaning of "herd" to a prior discussion about musk oxen and to note the homophone relationship with "heard."
Lesson 4
Day 4
Activity 1 directs students to look at a world map, identify places (Canada, Greenland, Alaska) where musk oxen live, and discusses that these regions are cold. The activity explicitly states that musk oxen are able to survive in very cold climates because of their thick fur and asks to discuss the tundra environment. Activity 2 has students create a musk ox with thick yarn and cotton to simulate qiviut and is encouraged to glue on as much "hair" as needed so the ox has thick fur to keep warm.
Lesson 5
Day 5
Students are prompted to explore illustrations in the Reading Workshop and to use the A is for Musk Ox book, spending time tracing words and exploring illustrations. In the Writing Workshop students draw a picture to accompany their dictated story and are told that the picture should relate to the story "in the same way that an illustrator's pictures enhance the author's words." Students are also asked to explain whether they liked the book and why or why not and whether they would recommend it and why.
Unit 2: H - Hondo and Fabian
Lesson 1
Day 1
The lesson's Skills list explicitly asks students to "compare and contrast the adventures and experiences of characters in familiar stories" with prompting and support. Question #2 asks students to identify differences between Hondo and Fabian, and Question #3 asks what each character did during the day, requiring students to link actions to each character. Activity 1 has students sort actions as either Hondo or Fabian and act them out, reinforcing comparison and connection of actions to characters.
Lesson 2
Day 2
Students are asked to name the two characters from the book Hondo and Fabian during the review. In Activity 1 students generate characteristics for "Cats" and "Dogs" and record shared traits in the overlapping "Both" section of a Venn diagram, practicing comparison of two items and identification of similarities and differences.
Lesson 3
Day 3
The review prompts students to name the two animals in Hondo and Fabian and to state one way the characters are alike and one way they are different. Question #1 asks students to retell the story (beginning, next, end), supporting connection of events. Activity 4 directs students to identify the characters and use words or phrases to describe each one while recording ideas on separate die-cuts. Question #2 asks how the characters feel at the end of their day, encouraging students to link characters to emotions or outcomes in the text.
Lesson 4
Day 4
Activity 2 asks the child to notice that Hondo and Fabian "were two animals that did some things together and some things apart" and to look at pictures of them together. The child is asked to relate that idea to a personal friend by painting an activity they do with a friend and then dictating a sentence about the painting. These prompts engage the child in recognizing and expressing a connection between two individuals.
Unit 3: I - The Little Island
Lesson 1
Day 1
The lesson asks students to answer Question #4, which requires them to state the little kitten's question and the answer he received, directly linking an individual (the kitten) to an idea from the text. Activity 2 prompts students to discuss the definition of an island and to compare an island and a continent, encouraging students to relate two ideas about land and water. The web link extension asks students to note similarities and differences among islands, which asks students to connect pieces of information across examples.
Lesson 2
Day 2
Students page through The Little Island and note how the pictures progress through the seasons, then are asked to talk about how the different seasons affected the island. During a pretend picnic, students choose appropriate gear for a named season and then imagine the season changing, describing what is changing on the island and what accessories are needed. Students are also prompted to relate how the seasons affect the island to how seasons affect themselves.
Lesson 3
Day 3
Activity 3 asks students to look at pages of the book to find examples of where different animals did most of their moving and to identify whether each animal moves in the air, on land, or in the water, which links each animal (an individual) to a piece of information. The activity has students act out whether each animal moves in the air, on land, or in the water and discusses that some animals can move in more than one way, supporting description of relationships. QUESTION #1 prompts students to retell the story using illustrations and guiding questions, which can lead students to describe connections among events or characters in the narrative.
Lesson 4
Day 4
Activity 1 asks the child to look at a picture of a stormy ocean, discuss how waves form, decide what causes the waves, and observe the connection between wind speed and wave strength. Activity 2 has the child hear the lines "There was a little Island in the ocean. Around it the winds blew...," act out how winds move around the island, and act out spatial relations (over, around, on, under, beside, near, far, above, in front of, behind) between the kitten and the island.
Lesson 5
Day 5
Activity 1 asks students to consider the book title The Little Island and to decide whether the island was little compared to things such as a continent, the ocean, Earth, animals on it, a blade of grass, or a drop of water. Activity 1 also has students use a ruler and tape measure to measure and compare lengths (child's height, table, sofa, room) and determine which is longest or shortest. Activity 2 has students look through the book, identify the title page, author/illustrator, and discuss what they see and their favorite part.
Unit 4: T - What Do You Do With a Tail Like This?
Lesson 1
Day 1
The "Similar and Different" activity asks the child to draw two animal cards and tell one similarity and one difference between the structures of the two animals, prompting students to state a connection between two individuals. The reading prompts ask the child to recall how different animals use their ears, eyes, and noses and to refer back to pictures, guiding students to connect pieces of information from the text. Activity 1 has students sort animals by number of legs (0, 2, 4, 6), which requires grouping animals and describing connections based on a shared attribute.
Lesson 2
Day 2
Students are directed to look specifically at pages in What Do You Do With a Tail Like This? about animals' tails and to talk about the purpose of that part of the animals' structure. The activity asks students to think about what each animal might need or use a tail for and then match and glue the correct tail to the animal. Activity instructions prompt students to explain why tails are shaped the way they are and to describe the tail they create in Activity 3.
Lesson 3
Day 3
The lesson introduces the terms "fiction" and "nonfiction" and asks the child to classify the current book as true or make-believe. Question #1 explicitly asks the child to compare this book to Hondo and Fabian and decide which was make-believe or true, prompting a comparison between two texts about animals. Question #2 asks the child to state what kind of information he learned and offers help to organize his thoughts, supporting description of connections among pieces of information.
Lesson 4
Day 4
Students are prompted to name an animal whose tail has a special job and to describe that job, which asks them to state the connection between an animal and its tail's function. Students choose an animal from the book and locate information in books or online, then discuss that animal's body parts and how they are used, connecting pieces of information from texts. In the "Who Has a Part Like This?" activity, students act out animals using specific body parts and match the part to the animal, practicing linking an idea (a body-part function) to an individual animal.
Lesson 5
Day 5
Activity 2 asks students to pay close attention to how the author put the parts of the book in order, to answer what the first section was about, and to go through the book identifying the order of the body parts. Activity 3 asks students to draw an animal body part they researched previously and to write or dictate 1–3 facts they learned about that part, which requires recalling and reporting pieces of information from prior text-based research. The instructions include prompted questions for the adult to ask the child about sequence and evaluation of the book.
Unit 5: L - We're Going on a Leaf Hunt
Lesson 1
Day 1
Students are asked to look back through the story and answer inferential questions such as "Do you think the children enjoyed their leaf hunt? Why or why not?", asking them to connect events to feelings. Students are prompted to identify obstacles the children faced and to state how the children felt at the end, which supports linking events to outcomes. The Skills list includes that students will, with prompting and support, retell familiar stories including key details, and an activity asks students to relate the story to their own search experiences, prompting text-to-self connections.
Lesson 3
Day 3
Students are asked to construct a simple map of the children's journey, drawing the mountain, maple tree, dark forest, and other stops in order and using arrows to show which way the children traveled. The activity image and directions emphasize sequencing of five locations (#1–#5) along a dotted path, and the optional extension prompts a conversation about which direction the children were traveling at various points on the map.
Lesson 4
Day 4
Students are prompted to discuss that leaves collect air and sunlight to make food for the plant and that this need for air is similar to the way people need air to breathe. Students are asked to talk about roots gathering water "just like people do," and to observe stems, leaves, and roots after planting seeds. Students are asked comparative questions (e.g., "What does your child think a tree root is like compared to the roots of a blade of grass?" and "What is the difference between the stem of a dandelion and a tree's trunk?") that prompt them to describe relationships between pieces of information.
Unit 6: F - Fireflies
Lesson 1
Day 1
The lesson's Skills list explicitly asks students, with prompting and support, to "describe the relationship between illustrations and the story," which requires linking pictures to story events. Question #2 asks students to determine how the boy feels and to "look through the book together for evidence from the pictures," prompting students to connect the character's emotion to illustrative and textual evidence. Questions #3 and #4 ask students to explain why the boy was both crying and smiling and to justify whether letting the fireflies go was right, prompting students to describe connections between events and ideas in the text.
Lesson 2
Day 2
Students are asked to use surrounding words to explain the meaning of "soaring" and identify a synonym for "blinking on, blinking off," which requires them to connect the target word to information elsewhere on the page. Students make a model firefly, learn insect characteristics, and then look at the "Insects" page to decide whether each pictured creature is an insect, explaining how they used the characteristics as clues. Students go outside to collect bugs and are prompted to talk about whether the collected bugs are insects and how they know, connecting observations to learned information.
Lesson 3
Day 3
The Opposites activity directs the child to find three pairs of words in the text ('on/off', 'dipping/soaring', 'low/high') and explains that these lines contain words with opposite meanings. The activity asks the child to read the lines again and identify the pairs, and then to think of and act out additional opposite word pairs. The teacher prompt explicitly frames the task as identifying relationships (opposite meanings) between words found in the book text.
Lesson 4
Day 4
Students recall and use insect characteristics (three body parts, exoskeleton, antennae, six legs, wings) and apply that information to sort picture cards into insects and non-insects. Students cut the creature pictures into cards, sort them into two groups, and count how many are in each group. Students are asked to come up with new ways to sort the same set of creatures (e.g., flying vs. non-flying, color, body shape), applying pieces of information about the creatures to make categorical connections.
Lesson 5
Day 5
Activity 2 asks the child to review illustrations and tell the story in his own words, which requires recounting events and their sequence. Activity 2 also prompts discussion questions such as "Would he like to catch fireflies like the boy in the book? How would he feel when he had to let them go?" which asks the child to connect an event (letting fireflies go) with an emotional idea (feeling). Activity 3 invites the child to describe a favorite summer activity, which could prompt making a connection between the boy's memory and the child's own experience.
Unit 7: E - But No Elephants
Lesson 1
Day 1
Question #1 asks students to describe Grandma Tildy's life at the beginning and at the end of the story and to explain what changed, prompting students to link two states/events. Question #3 asks students to name predicaments Grandma Tildy faced and explain how she solved each one, which requires students to connect events with solutions (cause–effect). Activity 2 has students order visitors and use ordinal language, reinforcing connections in sequence and relationships among events in the text.
Lesson 2
Day 2
Activity 1 asks the child to look at book illustrations and describe the position of animals using relational words (e.g., "in," "on," "beside," "under") and to use that word along with two animals in the picture. The review prompt asks the child to recall a "predicament" Grandma Tildy faced in the story, which elicits text-based recall about an event or situation from the book.
Lesson 3
Day 3
Students are asked to explain what happened in the story after reading, which requires describing events and their relationships. In Activity 1, students generate an animal and then explain how that animal would help Grandma Tildy, directly connecting an individual (the animal) to another individual and to an event or purpose. In Activity 3, students sort animals by number of legs and are asked to think of other ways to sort them, which asks students to connect and compare pieces of information from the text and unit pictures.
Lesson 4
Day 4
The lesson asks students to look back at the story picture of Grandma Tildy, answer what she is doing and why (picking apples so she will have something to eat), and to decide whether eating is a want or a need. Students are prompted to examine each pet in the story and explain how that pet helped Grandma Tildy meet a want or a need (e.g., canary provided singing/company, beaver cut wood for warmth, woodpecker fixed the roof). Students sort a collection of household objects into wants and needs and explain why they placed each item in its category. The retelling activity asks students to hold up each animal as it is introduced and to tell or create the rest of the story, reinforcing connections between characters and outcomes.
Unit 8: C - Millions of Cats
Lesson 1
Day 1
Students construct a large Venn diagram to compare the cats in Millions of Cats with Fabian from Hondo and Fabian, listing similarities (both have whiskers, fur, four paws, long tail, like to eat) and differences (Fabian stays indoors; Millions of Cats live outdoors and have many other cats). The Skills section explicitly states students will, "With prompting and support, compare and contrast the adventures and experiences of characters in familiar stories." Reading questions also prompt students to explain character motivations and events (e.g., why the cats were quarreling and why one cat was left).
Lesson 2
Day 2
In Activity 1, students are asked to connect the book text 'he set out over hills... He trudged through cool valleys' to real landforms by making hills, valleys, rivers, ponds, and islands and "talk about different physical features of the Earth." In the Getting Started review, students choose 5 cats and divide them into two groups based on one characteristic, which has them link individual cats to shared information. In Activity 3, students decorate "A Pretty Cat" to represent the "prettiest" cat the man could have picked for his wife, linking a character choice to an idea from the story.
Lesson 3
Day 3
Students are asked explicitly, "After reading, ask your child if there is a lesson to be learned from this story. What lesson does the story teach?" and are given a model answer that connects the old man and woman's love to the cat becoming pretty. The review question asks which cat ended up being the pretty cat the couple was hoping for, prompting students to link the characters (the couple) with the outcome for the cat. Activity 2 references that most cats wanted to go with the old man but one did not, which can prompt students to describe the connection between characters' choices and story events.
Lesson 4
Day 4
Activity 2 asks the child to "talk about how the poem relates to the book" and to decide whether the poem describes the scene from the book, prompting the child to compare two pieces of text and their events. Activity 1 directs the child to note that the old man and old woman bathe, brush, and feed the cat and then to find informational sources about pet care and communicate what she learned, prompting the child to connect character actions in the story with real-world pet-care ideas.
Unit 9: G - The Real Mother Goose
Lesson 1
Day 1
The lesson has the adult read and/or listen to poems and then explicitly point out and ask the child to identify rhyming pairs (e.g., emphasizing the "horn" and "corn" endings, pointing out "sheep" and "asleep"). The child is asked to find rhyming pairs in "Humpty Dumpty" and generate rhyming words for a given word ("cat" → rat, bat, sat, etc.). Activity 2 asks the child "What is happening?" and has the child act out the poem, which prompts attention to events in the text.
Lesson 2
Day 2
Students read the poem "The Year," which describes months along with typical weather and activities, and are asked to look at the "Months of the Year" sheet. Students color, cut, and glue the January-June boxes and are prompted to "talk about what happens in January. What is the weather like?" Students are also invited to include notes about family birthdays tied to particular months, linking a month to a family event.
Lesson 5
Day 5
Students listen to and read poems that explicitly mention spherical objects and are prompted to "talk about the poems together and identify the spherical objects described," which asks them to pull information from the text. Students are asked to compare a die-cut circle and a ball by identifying how they are similar and different (2-dimensional vs. 3-dimensional), requiring students to describe a relationship between two ideas. Students also practice using the word "sphere" and describing where the sphere is compared to another object, reinforcing links between words, objects, and descriptions.
Unit 10: O - Owl Babies
Lesson 1
Day 1
Students are prompted to look at the cover and predict whether the book will teach facts or tell an imaginary story, engaging them in connecting prior knowledge to the text's purpose. Students answer "How do you know?" by citing that the owl babies had names, talked, and showed emotions, using those pieces of information to support the conclusion that the book is a story. Students are asked to name true facts from the book and to explain that factual information was used within a fictional story, connecting pieces of information to the author's purpose/genre.
Lesson 2
Day 2
Students are asked to examine the front cover and pages of Baby Owl, predict whether it is fiction or non-fiction, and explain why they think so (for example, noting that photographs suggest non-fiction). Students watch an owl video and then dictate or write facts they learned onto designated spaces on an owl illustration, gathering pieces of information from the book and video.
Lesson 3
Day 3
Students are asked who in the book wants something and what he wants, and they practice reading Bill's line "I want my mommy!" which links a character to a desire. Students are asked to retell the story in their own words, which can lead them to describe relationships among events. Students listen to the animated reading and identify when the music seems scary or cheerful and say whether that matches the story, connecting an element (music) to characters' feelings.
Lesson 4
Day 4
Students view the "Owls of North America" website and are asked to observe what is different and what is similar about the owls. Students are prompted to click on owls to learn about what makes them like all other owls and what makes them unique. Students are explicitly asked how the book Owl Babies gives the owls attributes they don't really have (for example, talking and human-like feelings), which asks them to connect the book's portrayal to real-world information.
Lesson 5
Day 5
In Reading Workshop, students are asked to examine two owl books, decide which is fiction and which is nonfiction, and identify clues in the texts (e.g., talking owls and painted illustrations vs. factual text and photographs) to support their ideas. In Writing Workshop, students record factual information about owls on one page and write a fictional story about a baby owl on the other page, putting nonfiction information and fiction side-by-side for comparison.
Unit 11: S - Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree
Lesson 1
Day 1
The skills list asks students, with prompting and support, to identify characters, settings, and major events and to describe the relationship between illustrations and the story, which prepares students to link parts of a text. The reading prompts ask students to look at the cover pictures of four branches and infer that they represent the four seasons, and Question #2 asks students to look at what Arnold does with his tree during each season, prompting students to connect Arnold's actions to particular seasons. The activities have students discuss seasonal changes and ask targeted questions (e.g., which season it is when a hemisphere is tilted toward the Sun), encouraging students to relate ideas about tilt and seasonal weather.
Lesson 3
Day 3
Students read The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree and are asked to locate and read the sentence "Some of the buds develop into sweet-smelling apple blossoms," reinforcing specific information in the text. The lesson asks the question "What gift did the tree give Arnold in each season?" which requires students to identify what the tree gave Arnold across different seasons. In Activity 3 students hear a poem that uses adjectives to describe each season and are asked to name the season based on those adjectives, linking descriptive information to the idea of a season.
Lesson 4
Day 4
In Activity 1 students are asked to look at the page where Arnold's family works together to make the apple pie and cider and to describe how each member contributes to the project. Students are prompted to explain why the family worked together, connecting individual actions to the event outcome (the pie and cider tasting good and it being more fun). In Activity 2 students listen to music that represents seasons and are asked to say which season is being described and what cues made them think of that season, linking the idea in the audio to the concept of a season.
Lesson 5
Day 5
Activity 2 asks students to name where and when The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree took place and explicitly labels this as the story's setting. Students are then asked to look through books with outdoor settings, identify the season of each story, and share the clues that helped them identify that season. Students are prompted to connect those textual clues (pieces of information) to the idea of the story's season.
Unit 12: D - Dinosaurs Big and Small
Lesson 1
Day 1
In Activity 1, students measure their own length and measure lengths of specific dinosaurs from the book, then are asked who is longer and which dinosaur is longest or shortest, requiring direct comparison of two pieces of information. Questions 4 and 5 ask students to discuss characteristics that all dinosaurs share and characteristics that differ among dinosaurs, prompting students to relate pieces of information across individuals. Question 2 asks students to identify the author and illustrator and define each role, which prompts students to connect the creator roles to how information and images present ideas in the text.
Lesson 2
Day 2
Pages 10 and 28 of the book are cited as saying that scientists use bones and fossils they find to help them learn about dinosaurs, and the lesson directs an adult to explain how bones become covered and paleontologists look for bones and fossil footprints. The playdough activity has the child press objects and twigs into dough and observe the resulting imprints, which links hands-on observation to the idea of fossil imprints described in the text. The lesson also directs the child to view a slideshow of dinosaur fossils, reinforcing the connection between fossils and what scientists learn about dinosaurs.
Lesson 3
Day 3
Question #1 asks the child to explain what "sprawl" means and to say how he can guess the meaning by comparing the text statement that dinosaurs "did not sprawl" with the pictures of lizards and crocodiles; this prompts the child to describe the connection between the idea in the sentence and the pictured animals. Activity 2 links the book's discussion of dinosaur weights to a hands-on balance activity in which the child predicts and then observes which object is heavier, directly practicing comparing pieces of information about weight. Activity 3 asks the child to identify adjectives in a poem and then apply those describing words to specific dinosaurs in the book, prompting the child to connect descriptive words (ideas) to particular dinosaurs (individuals).
Unit 13: P - Harold and the Purple Crayon
Lesson 1
Day 1
Activity 1 asks students to recall specific predicaments Harold experiences and to remember the solutions he devised with his purple crayon (e.g., drew a boat for rising water, drew pie when hungry, drew a balloon after slipping). The activity then prompts students to propose solutions for new predicaments, requiring them to connect a problem (event) to an imagined solution (idea). Reading questions also ask students how Harold feels at the end and whether parts were dangerous, prompting connections between events and emotions.
Lesson 2
Day 2
The lesson asks students about Harold and the Purple Crayon: "What shape is the moon in the story? Does the moon always look that way?" and prompts discussion. It explains that the moon's revolution causes the different shapes and has students stand and role-play the Earth and moon to see changing views. Students cut out, order, and glue the phase pictures and titles around a circle and are asked to look at the moon each night to notice how the shapes change.
Lesson 3
Day 3
Students reread Harold and the Purple Crayon and answer comprehension questions that require linking events (e.g., QUESTION #4: "How did he figure out how to get home?"). Other questions ask students to identify important events and moments (most interesting thing, most amazing drawing, scary moments), prompting description of relationships among events. In Activity 3 students connect the idea of Harold's drawn (flat) buildings to real-world solid buildings by deciding which 3D shapes match the drawn squares/rectangles and by tracing/counting faces, edges, and corners to explain the relationship between the drawing and the real object.
Lesson 4
Day 4
The teacher asks the child to compare Harold's imagined neighborhood with his own by asking, "Ask your child if his neighborhood is like Harold's. Why or why not? What does his neighborhood have in it?" The activity directs the child to think about important places he goes and choose which to include on a map, connecting the idea of a neighborhood in the story to concrete places. The child constructs a neighborhood map using provided building images and explains or demonstrates relationships among places by placing roads and moving a toy car from place to place.
Unit 14: B - Blueberries for Sal
Lesson 1
Day 1
The comprehension questions prompt students to explain reasons and relationships (Question 2 asks why each pair wanted blueberries, prompting students to link individuals to motivations). Question 3 asks what each child was supposed to do, which has students compare roles and relate characters to actions. The Activity "Canning for the Winter" has students connect the idea of making jam to the purpose of preserving food for winter, linking an event/idea to historical practices.
Lesson 2
Day 2
Students are asked to name one similarity and one difference between Little Sal and Little Bear during the Review, which requires comparing two individuals. In Activity 1 students examine pictures to find clues that the story takes place in the past, connecting pieces of information (visual details) to the idea of time/setting. In Activity 3 students describe what the verb "hustle" must mean based on a picture and then act out different characters' movements, connecting word meaning to character actions.
Lesson 4
Day 4
Students are asked to create a two-column chart that lists elements of fiction and elements of non-fiction about bears from the book Blueberries for Sal, and to use a National Geographic kids article or non-fiction books to name scientifically accurate facts. The provided chart explicitly lists fictional statements (e.g., bears can talk) and factual information (e.g., bears eat fruit, mother bears protect their cubs), supporting comparison between story elements and real-world facts.
Lesson 5
Day 5
In Activity 2 students examine books set in the past and search for clues that identify the setting as past, then share their findings. The activity prompts students to compare story details (clothing, technology used for cooking, music, driving, farm work) with what people use today. Students are asked explicitly to identify these clues and explain how they indicate the time period of the story.
Unit 15: R - Rain
Lesson 1
Day 1
The lesson includes a guiding question, "How does water change and influence the environment?", which prompts students to describe a connection between the idea of water and the environment. During reading, students are asked what they think the rain will fall on next and to place die-cut pieces on a sky mat to show the progression of the story, which has students connect sequential events. Question #4 asks students to talk about different kinds of rain and relate them to personal experiences, prompting connections between vocabulary/ideas and real events.
Lesson 4
Day 4
In Activity 1 (Making it Rain) students are prompted to identify where water is located on Earth (rivers, lakes, oceans) and to compare that information to what happens in the experiment. Students watch the jar demonstration and are asked "What happens? Why?", linking the idea that the Sun warms water (evaporation) to cooler air causing condensation and rain. The evaporation diagram image and the puddle example are used to connect the two ideas (warm, moist air rising and then cooling to form rain).
Unit 16: N - Night in the Country
Lesson 1
Day 1
Students are asked after reading Night in the Country to identify "What does the author seem to think about nighttime? How can you tell?" which requires them to connect the author's idea/opinion with words and pictures from the text. Students are prompted to discuss why the country is especially dark (connecting the idea of 'far from city lights' to the observable detail of darkness). The teacher-led comparisons of city, suburbs, and country ask students to relate characteristics of these places, linking ideas and pieces of information from the discussion and text.
Lesson 2
Day 2
Students cut out and dress two paper-doll characters to represent a farm (country) person and a city person, then glue craft sticks to make puppets and role-play as those characters. Students ask and answer guided comparative questions (e.g., Where do you get your fruit? How close is the nearest store? What do you like to do for fun?), describing differences and connections in how the two individuals meet needs. Students discuss and contrast types of activities that happen during the day versus at night when creating the night painting, linking ideas about day and night.
Lesson 3
Day 3
The lesson asks the child to name one difference between life in the country and life in the city, prompting a comparison of two ideas. The lesson asks the child to retell Night in the Country in his own words using the pictures as a guide, which asks the child to recount and sequence events. The lesson has the child identify landforms shown in the book and create models, connecting information in the text to concrete representations.
Unit 17: M - Marshmallow
Lesson 1
Day 1
The reading questions ask students to explain why Oliver "hesitated" before pouncing, linking his cat instincts and Miss Tilly's warning to his behavior. Students are asked why Oliver decided to be friendly to the bunny and whether they were surprised when Oliver accepted Marshmallow as a friend, prompting them to describe character relationships and motivations. Question about advantages and disadvantages of having a rabbit asks students to connect pieces of information about the pet (quiet vs. chewing).
Lesson 2
Day 2
Students are asked to look at the part of the book where Oliver is about to pounce on Marshmallow and Miss Tilly reprimands him, and to talk about how Oliver followed Miss Tilly's rules and stopped himself. Students create and discuss household rules on butcher paper and explain why rules are important and how they help the family function. Students play Simon Says and discuss how following the game's rule (only follow commands preceded by "Simon Says") is required to be successful, linking rule-following to outcomes.
Lesson 3
Day 3
After reading, the child is asked to tell the story in her own words and to use the pictures to prompt her retelling. The materials state that in the book Marshmallow the little bunny was small compared to the full-grown cat, and Activity 2 asks the child to compare the size of two stuffed animals and determine which is longer. The teacher/parent is also prompted to ask how the child can compare the size of the animals, which guides the child to relate information about two individuals.
Lesson 4
Day 4
Students are asked to talk about how Owen and Mzee's friendship was similar to and different from Owen and Marshmallow's, with specific examples of similarities and differences provided. The activity explicitly prompts comparison (similar/ different) and offers an optional Venn diagram extension for organizing those connections. The lesson includes prompting and support through example comparisons and guided questions.
Lesson 5
Day 5
In Activity 2 students read poems and are asked how the poems sound different from a story and to identify rhyming pairs, which has them compare the idea of a poem versus a story. Activity 2 also has students look through books to determine whether each is a story book or a poetry book and then share their findings, prompting comparison of two ideas/genres. In Activity 3 students fill in a short animal story with prompts that sequence events (e.g., "He got lost when..., He wandered..., Then he saw his owner...") so students produce connected events in a text.
Unit 18: U - Umbrella
Lesson 1
Day 1
Students are asked to recall events from the book and answer specific questions that require linking items in the story (e.g., QUESTION #1 asks what gift Momo received and why she couldn't use it, connecting the gift to the lack of rain). QUESTION #3 asks how Momo felt when it finally rained and why that day was important, which asks students to connect an event (the rain) to Momo's feelings and change in independence. The extension and Activities prompt students to compare their own walk to the story and to discuss how Momo felt while waiting for rain, encouraging connections between story events and personal experience.
Lesson 2
Day 2
The lesson states that "Momo's parents had come from Japan" and instructs the adult to point out Japanese characters on specific pages, which links a character to cultural information in the text. The lesson asks the child to locate Japan on a world map and to discuss its continent and distance from the United States, connecting text information to geographic knowledge. The lesson also directs the child to conduct research and view pictures of people, homes, and habitats in Japan, which ties text details to real-world information.
Lesson 4
Day 4
The lesson asks the child what the sky usually looks like just before it rains, prompting the student to connect cloud appearance with the event of rain. It states that "Clouds are formed when water in the air evaporates and then condenses," which presents two ideas (evaporation and condensation) and their relationship to cloud formation. The teacher prompt to "Remind your child of the rain-making activity she did in Unit 15, R - Rain" encourages the student to relate a prior activity (an earlier event/information) to the current explanation about clouds.
Lesson 5
Day 5
Students are asked to find capital letters on page 2 and determine why each word is capitalized (for example, that Momo is capitalized because it is a person's name and New York and Japan are capitalized because they are place names). Students are prompted to notice capital letters that begin sentences and people's names during independent reading of Umbrella. In the writing activity, students point to where they wrote their name, confirm they capitalized it, and explain why they used capital letters (beginning of a sentence or a person's name).
Unit 19: J - Jump Frog Jump
Lesson 1
Day 1
Students are asked to look back through the book to remember which animals the frog escaped and which animals did not escape (Questions #3 and #4), requiring them to describe the relationship between the frog and other animals. In Activity 1 students cut out story sequence pictures, consult the book, and put the pictures in order from beginning to end, requiring them to identify connections between events. The Questions to Explore ("How can words show relationships?" and "Why is sequence important?") and the prepositions skill support use of relational language as students describe who did what and when.
Lesson 3
Day 3
Students are asked to line up story sequence cards and tell the story using those cards, which requires them to describe connections among events. In Activity 3, students read phrases from the book and place die-cut animals to show positional and relational connections (e.g., "The frog was under the fly"). Students are also prompted to create original sentences that relate two animals using relational words (to, from, in, out, on, off, for, of, by, with) and to demonstrate those relationships with props.
Lesson 4
Day 4
Students are asked to read a nonfiction text or website about the life cycle of a frog and to "talk about what a life cycle is," with the text explicitly describing eggs → tadpoles → froglets → frogs. Students construct a four-part diagram on a paper plate, glue representations in each quadrant, and label each stage (eggs, tadpole, froglet, frog). The image and activity require students to place stages in sequence and use the text information to identify and label each stage.
Unit 20: K - Kindness
Lesson 1
Day 1
Students are asked explicitly, "What do the animals do throughout the book?" and prompted to say that the animals "show kindness to one another, and one act of kindness leads to another," which asks them to describe a connection between events/ideas. Students discuss specific acts of kindness and answer "What was your favorite example of an animal helping another animal? Why?", which asks them to describe connections between individuals and their actions. In Activity 1 students order the animal characters according to when they are introduced in the story, count them, and discuss sequence, reinforcing connections between events and characters in the text.
Lesson 2
Day 2
Activity 3 directs students to choose characters from the book and act out acts of kindness with a partner, which has students engage with characters and events from the text. Activity 1 has students use the Kindness Mouse puppet to go say kind things to family members, reinforcing interactions between individuals described or modeled in the book.
Lesson 3
Day 3
After reading, students are asked which act of kindness they found especially kind and how Harry helping the frog resulted in a series of kind acts, prompting them to describe the connection between events and characters. Students are also asked whether they agree with the author's idea that "a little bit of kindness can go a long way" and to discuss what that means, which asks them to connect an idea in the text to events. The "Animals in Fiction" chart has students identify actions of each animal and classify which are animal actions versus human actions, requiring them to compare actions across individuals.
Lesson 5
Day 5
Activity 1 directs students to discuss that "one act of kindness led to another" and asks them to consider how many acts occurred as kindness was passed along, prompting attention to a chain of events. Activity 2 has students look carefully at illustrations and retell the story, giving a general description of each act of kindness, which has students identify and describe successive events in the text.
Unit 21: V - Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin
Lesson 1
Day 1
Students are asked in Activity 1 to match instrument pictures with the number playing and the ensemble name (solo, duet, chamber group of 10), which requires linking individual instruments to the group they form. The reading question asking "When the musicians all joined together, what did they form?" prompts students to state that individual musicians combined to make a chamber group or orchestra. The solo/duet discussion asks students to consider what it means for one person to perform alone versus two people performing together, reinforcing the relationship between numbers of individuals and ensemble types.
Lesson 2
Day 2
Students are asked to identify natural resources used in making instruments (e.g., wood for violin, metals for brass instruments), which requires linking instrument types to source materials. Students sort instrument pictures into groups (strings/no strings, color, size) and then create a second classification, which requires comparing pieces of information and organizing relationships. Students watch instrument videos and are asked to imagine playing in an orchestra, connecting instrument information to the idea of ensemble roles.
Lesson 3
Day 3
Students are asked after reading Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin to use the book to place instrument pictures in the order in which they appear, requiring them to connect pieces of information from the text. Students are prompted to compare objects (a can and a paper towel roll) and to identify which instruments have cylinder or cone shapes, describing similarities and differences between items in the text. Students are guided to classify ideas from the book by explaining that musicians provide a service while their instruments are goods and then sorting jobs into goods or services categories.
Unit 22: Y - Little Blue and Little Yellow
Lesson 1
Day 1
Students are asked targeted comprehension questions that link characters and events (e.g., Q1 asks where Little Yellow lives compared to Little Blue; Q3 asks what happened when Little Blue and Little Yellow hugged, and Q7 asks how Little Blue's parents discovered the cause). The directions tell adults to prompt and support by turning back to pages and re-reading sections if the child has trouble remembering answers. The mixing-colors activity asks students to connect the idea of color mixing to the story event (What happens when blue and yellow are combined?), reinforcing connections between an idea and events in the text.
Lesson 2
Day 2
Activity 1 asks the child to recall what they remember about friendship from the story Marshmallow and what makes a good citizen from Harry the Happy Mouse, prompting comparison of ideas across texts. The child is asked to look back at pictures from Little Blue and Little Yellow and identify ways the two characters were good friends and good citizens, directly connecting individuals to ideas and events. The child is asked whether Little Blue ignored rules and why obeying his mother was important, prompting them to describe a connection between an event (leaving home) and the idea of safety.
Lesson 3
Day 3
Students read sentences from Little Blue and Little Yellow that show linked events ("In school they sit still in neat rows. After school they run and jump."). Students are asked to read and identify the sight word "they" in those connected sentences. Students are encouraged to use pictures from the book and balls of dough to retell and act out the story in their own words, which requires recalling characters and events and putting them together in sequence.
Lesson 4
Day 4
Activity 2 asks students to look back through the story and explain how Mr. Lionni shows the parents and houses (bigger shapes and torn brown boxes) and how he shows Little Blue's feelings (page color changes), which requires students to connect visual elements to characters and emotions in the text. The Paper Story task has students create torn-paper characters, tell what happened to those characters, and choose one scene to glue and write or dictate what is happening, which engages students in recounting events and representing relationships among story elements. Activity 1 and Activity 3 ask students to search, sort, and match items to color categories and beginning sounds, asking them to connect objects/pictures to informational categories.
Unit 23: W - George Washington's Birthday
Lesson 1
Day 1
The Skills list explicitly includes the target skill: with prompting and support, describe the connection between two individuals, events, ideas, or pieces of information in a text. During reading, students are asked to compare the picture of George Washington on the dollar bill to the book cover, prompting them to connect two pieces of information. Students read sidebars that identify which stories about Washington are true versus myth and are asked to talk about the word "myth," prompting them to connect story elements to factual information. Students are also asked to explain whether George's brother was a tyrant and to state what lessons George learned, prompting students to connect events or behaviors to ideas or labels.
Lesson 2
Day 2
Students are asked to count the 50 stars and explain why there are 50 (one for each state) and to note that the 13 stripes represent the first colonies, directly connecting flag features to pieces of information. Students are prompted to cut out pictures and to explain that the bald eagle was chosen for its beauty, strength, and long life and that the Statue of Liberty represents freedom because people came to the U.S. for freedom, connecting symbols to ideas. Students read the "Symbols of the United States" page and are asked what they notice about the flag and which word box should be the title, prompting discussion of relationships between images and their meanings.
Lesson 4
Day 4
In Activity 1 students watch a video about George Washington and are asked to talk about his qualities and why they are important. They then watch a video about Benjamin Franklin and are told that Franklin "lived during the time of George Washington" and that, "like George Washington, he helped to lead our country when it was brand new," followed by a prompt to talk about qualities they admire in Franklin. These prompts require students to discuss attributes of each individual and note that both played leadership roles in the country.
Lesson 5
Day 5
The Reading Workshop directs the child to notice that some information appears in regular text while other information appears in boxes and asks the child why an author might include information in those boxes. The text points out the words "FACT" and "MYTH" and explicitly notes that the boxed information is real information that goes along with the story. The child is asked to look for different places text appears on the pages, think about the purpose for those placements, and then share observations about those connections.
Unit 24: Q - The Quilt Story
Lesson 1
Day 1
Students read The Quilt Story and are asked, after reading, to explain how the quilt helped both girls, directly asking them to describe the connection between the object and the girls' experiences. Students are also asked how they could tell the second part of the story took place in more modern times, prompting them to connect events and pieces of information (style of dress, travel, housing) to the time period. The skills list explicitly asks students, with prompting and support, to describe the relationship between illustrations and the story, which requires linking visual information to story events.
Lesson 2
Day 2
Students are asked to go through the beginning pages and identify ways the pioneer family used natural resources to meet their needs (wood for houses/furniture/wheels/toys; tea for drinking; beeswax/fats for candles), which links pieces of information (resource → need). The text prompts discussion of settlers and Native Americans, noting language differences and lack of trust, which links two groups and reasons for their interactions. Students are also prompted to talk about Daniel Boone's character qualities and how those qualities allowed him to persist in his explorations, linking personal traits to events.
Lesson 3
Day 3
Activity 3 asks the child to compare and contrast the setting and the characters at the beginning and at the end of the story using a Then and Now Venn diagram and to record his ideas on that page. The lesson also instructs the child to tell the story back in his own words, using the book to prompt him. An answer image for the Venn diagram lists specific shared and differing details (e.g., "mothers repaired the quilt" in Both; "Abigail traveled in a covered wagon" in Long Ago; "the girl traveled in a car" in Much Later).
Lesson 4
Day 4
Students read brief descriptions of historical figures and their associated holidays on the "Famous Americans and Their Holidays" page and then cut out and glue each picture onto the correct square, linking each individual to a holiday. Students also read descriptions on the "Other American Holidays" sheet and color pictures representing holidays, linking events (holidays) to their historical meanings. The teacher directions prompt discussion about how holidays honor people from the past and how some holidays are based on historical events, providing opportunities for students to connect individuals with events or ideas.
Lesson 5
Day 5
In Activity 2 students are asked to consider the role of illustrations and to look at Abigail's facial expression, then explain how that feeling helps them understand the book. Students are also asked to compare the girls' faces (Abigail and the modern girl) and explain how their facial expressions reveal what is going on in the story. After independent reading students are prompted to point out an expression and explain what they learn about the story from it.
Unit 25: X - An Extraordinary Egg
Lesson 1
Day 1
The lesson asks students to talk about the similarities and differences between the friendship of Chicken and Jessica and Marshmallow and Oliver (Question #3), prompting them to compare two individuals and their relationships. The Skills section explicitly includes, "With prompting and support, compare and contrast the adventures and experiences of characters in familiar stories," which directs student practice. Activity 2 has students identify and sort examples from the book into "Facts About Frogs" and "Fictional Frogs," asking students to connect pieces of information to the categories "fact" and "fiction."
Lesson 2
Day 2
Students are asked to talk about the animal in the story that hatched from the egg and to identify what the frogs thought it was and whether they were right. Students are prompted to classify the animals (chicken as a bird, alligator as a reptile) and to state a connection: that both birds and reptiles hatch from eggs. The activity directs students to use questioning and discussion to compare the groups and state the shared characteristic.
Lesson 4
Day 4
Students are asked to read alligator facts and to refer back to the frog life cycle they made, recalling the stages of the frog life cycle and how those stages compare to an alligator's. A direct prompt asks the child "how that differs from the life cycle of a frog," requiring the student to describe similarities and differences between the two life-cycle sequences. The craft activity and acting-out activities have students label, sequence, and physically represent egg → young → adult for both frog and alligator, reinforcing connections between stages.
Unit 26: Z - Greedy Zebra
Lesson 1
Day 1
The lesson asks the child to predict how the zebra will be greedy and what might happen as a result, prompting students to link an action to a consequence. After reading, the child is asked to explain how the zebra was greedy and what happened because of his greediness, directly asking for a connection between an individual's behavior and resulting events. The Questions to Explore include "What are the effects of one person taking more than he or she needs?", which prompts students to describe cause-and-effect relationships.
Lesson 3
Day 3
Students are asked to listen to and read Greedy Zebra, use the illustrations to retell the story, and predict what would have happened if Zebra had not been greedy. The retelling task requires students to recount events in the text, and the prediction prompt asks students to link Zebra's greed (an idea/trait) to the outcome of events. The teacher script also models and prompts reading a specific word in context, supporting guided discussion about story events.
Lesson 4
Day 4
Students read and discuss factual paragraphs about five African animals and use that information to color cut-outs and place animals in a savannah scene, applying stated relationships such as "zebra stripes blend in with the tall grass," "the lion is the main predator of the zebra," and that zebra herds blend together making it hard for a lion to pick out an individual. Students act out verbs and verbals from a story about the animals, linking phrases like "the bravest of them peered" or "soon all the animals were on their way" to physical movements. These activities require students to use pieces of information from the text (animal traits, behaviors, and habitat) to make decisions about coloring, placement, and movement.
Lesson 5
Day 5
In Activity 2 students are asked to identify books with animal characters and to choose two of those books and name one similarity and one difference between the books' characters. Activity 2 also asks students to choose two books with outdoor settings and identify the setting of each, and to identify three nonfiction books and recall what subject each one was about. In Activity 3 students are prompted to think about characters, settings, and events when they draw and write about their favorite book.
2: Holidays
Unit 27: Halloween
Lesson 1
Day 1
Students are asked to read Goodnight Moon and Goodnight Goon and to answer why Goodnight Moon was written, prompting them to link purpose to effect on a reader. Students are asked to observe and describe similarities and differences between the two covers and to note that Goodnight Goon uses the style of Goodnight Moon but changes the words to Halloween ideas, prompting them to describe the relationship between the two texts/ideas. Students are asked to look at a pictured lagoon in the text and decide which definition fits, prompting them to connect a piece of information (word meaning) to the text context.
Lesson 2
Day 2
The lesson text explains relationships between bones and their functions, e.g., that the skeleton gives the body structure, joints allow movement, the skull protects the brain, and the ribs protect the heart. Students are instructed to color and identify specific body parts on an activity page and to point to the correct bones while completing the Dem Bones dance during the video. The adult is instructed to 'explain to your child' these functions, providing direct pairs of information (bone → function).
Lesson 4
Day 4
Students are asked to watch a video that explains different kinds of bats, their diets, and their importance to the ecosystem, providing multiple pieces of information in one source. Students are prompted to answer questions about what kind of bat they are and what they eat, which requires recalling specific information from the video. The review also includes an activity asking for a synonym for "lagoon," showing practice with relating a word to a similar idea.
Unit 28: Thanksgiving
Lesson 1
Day 1
Students are asked to summarize why a type of Thanksgiving has been celebrated in many cultures (connecting the idea of Thanksgiving with harvest/food). Students trace the voyage of the pilgrims from England to Plymouth and identify the Atlantic, connecting events and places. The skills list and reading prompts ask students, with prompting and support, to describe the relationship between illustrations and the text and to ask and answer questions about key details in a text.
Lesson 2
Day 2
Activity 1 asks students to recall reasons and relationships in the Pilgrims story (e.g., Why did the Pilgrims leave England?; How did the Indians help the Pilgrims?; What was the reason for the first Thanksgiving?). Activity 2 has students predict and observe how stormy seas affect the Mayflower (cause-and-effect observation). Activity 3 has students act out events and feelings from the text, reinforcing links between events and responses.
Lesson 3
Day 3
Students read a short article about Pocahontas and are asked to discuss how the help Pocahontas provided was different from the help the Native Americans at Plymouth provided to the settlers, prompting them to describe connections and differences between two individuals/groups. Students reread pages about kinds of feasts and talk about family favorite foods, making connections between information in the text and their own experiences. Students are asked to explain that a cornucopia symbolizes thankfulness and to link that symbol to the Pilgrims' gratitude for food and Native American help, connecting an idea (symbol) to pieces of information in the text.
Lesson 4
Day 4
Activity 1 tells students that Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving a national holiday and names President's Day as celebrating the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and it asks the child why we still celebrate him today. The Getting Started review asks the child what it means to be grateful and what one thing the Pilgrims were grateful for at the first Thanksgiving. The lesson prompts students to name words that describe Abraham Lincoln and to explain reasons for celebration, linking a person (Lincoln) to events/ideas (Thanksgiving, President's Day, freedom and unity).
Lesson 5
Day 5
The Reading Workshop instructs the child to remember that illustrations go along with the words and sometimes help explain what the author is trying to communicate. It directs the child to spend time independently studying the illustrations to see how they help the author teach about Thanksgiving. It then asks the child to point out observations about the illustrations.
Unit 29: Christmas
Lesson 1
Day 1
The reading section asks the adult to explain that the author was inspired to write the story and that her husband took photographs of their daughter to illustrate it, which presents a relationship between individuals and their roles. The text explicitly links evergreen plants to the idea of reminding people of spring and links decorating trees to Christmas celebrations, which presents connections between ideas and events. The parent prompts (e.g., ask what he notices, predict the story, look for edited photographs) and Activity 2 asking the child to state three things learned about real Christmas trees provide opportunities to notice and report pieces of information from the text.
Lesson 2
Day 2
Activity 2 asks the child what snow is made of and what happens when the Sun warms it, prompting the child to connect the event of snow in the story with the idea that snow is frozen water that melts back to liquid. Activity 1 asks the child to recount a favorite part of The Christmas Wish and explicitly links the photographer's being a native of Norway to the story setting, prompting the child to connect information in the text to background facts about Norway. Activity 3 asks the child to create animals and a snowy scene based on animals read about in the story, encouraging the child to link textual information about animals to a created representation.
Lesson 3
Day 3
Activity 3 asks the child to page through the book and note all the animals the protagonist encounters and asks specific questions about the reindeer (e.g., "What does it look like? Can a reindeer really fly?"). Activity 3 also directs the child to read an informational article about reindeer to learn how they thrive in the cold, which connects story details to factual information. Activity 1 has the child look at the page showing the northern lights and watch a video while an adult explains the scientific cause, linking the picture in the text to an explanation.
Lesson 4
Day 4
Activity 1 contains specific prompts asking the child to explain why Anja wanted to be one of Santa's elves and how Anja already showed the spirit of an elf, which asks the child to connect the individual (Anja) to the idea/role (elf). The activity also asks how Anja showed her commitment and whether her experience was a dream or real and why, which asks the child to connect events or pieces of information to draw a conclusion.
Lesson 5
Day 5
Activity 1 directs the child to look at the first pages of The Christmas Wish and notice the kind deeds Anja did for her neighbor, friends, and family. Activity 1 then prompts the child to think of a simple task he could do "to be an elf like Anja," linking Anja's actions to an action the child could take. The lesson has the child read The Christmas Wish aloud in Activity 2, which exposes students to the characters and events in the text.
Unit 30: February Celebrations
Lesson 1
Day 1
Students listen to The Biggest Valentine Ever and answer targeted questions that require linking characters and events (e.g., Q1 asks how the argument between Clayton and Desmond started; Q4 asks what they decided to do the next day and how it worked out). Students explain characters' feelings about the valentines they made alone (Q3) and connect that to the later outcome when they worked together (Q4). Students are asked to identify the lesson learned (Q5) and to brainstorm alternative responses to differing opinions (Q6), which prompts them to describe connections between ideas, actions, and outcomes.
Lesson 2
Day 2
Activity 2 asks the child to identify the person pictured on each coin and to recall one fact about that person (e.g., Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation; Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence; Roosevelt and the Great Depression/World War II; Washington as first president and known for honesty). Activity 1 asks the child what a president does and to watch a video about the president's job, prompting discussion of the role. Activity 3 has the child watch a song about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and then discuss aspects of being president.
Lesson 4
Day 4
Activity 3 asks the child to name something similar between the work of Booker T. Washington and Martin Luther King, Jr., and even provides an example that both worked to give fair and equal opportunities. Activities 1 and 2 have students watch storybook/video biographies of each individual and discuss each person's contributions (Booker T.'s passion for learning; MLK's work for equal rights), providing content for comparison. Activity 4 asks the child to connect the leaders' goals about working together and fairness to characters in another story, offering additional practice linking ideas across texts.
1: Environment
Unit 1: Habitats and Homes
Lesson 1
My Environment
Students are asked to read or listen to labels and a short paragraph (Activity 2 and Activity 3) and then explain why particular rooms or items are important to a healthy environment. In Activity 2 students circle items that relate to meeting basic needs (water, food, shelter) and discuss how those items meet those needs. In Activity 3 students state which room is most important and describe how that room is used and why it supports the home environment.
Lesson 2
What Is a Map?
Students hear and discuss the book Me On the Map and are asked to name their country, state, town, and address, linking those place-based pieces of information. An adult shows a world map and asks students to locate North America, the United States, and then the student's state, explicitly connecting a continent to a country and to a state. On map worksheets and oral questions (e.g., "What is beside the refrigerator?," "What is in front of the couch?," "What is next to the bathtub?," "What is behind the desk chair?") students describe spatial relationships between items shown on the map.
Lesson 3
Guide to Animal Habitats
Students are asked to describe the environment where they live and then compare it to animal habitats (Introduction prompts). During read-alouds students stop to point out the animals and plants living in each habitat (Activity 1), and they sort pictures into Plants, Animals, and Insects while being told that many animals need plants and insects for food (Activity 4). The lesson explicitly lists the skill 'Connect literature to prior knowledge or experience,' supporting guided connections between book information and students' own experience.
Lesson 4
Animals Live and Grow
Students are asked in Activity 2 to analyze living things they recorded for each habitat and to find an organism that provides food for another organism, identifying the 'consumer' and the 'energy source' and cutting/pasting matches onto an activity page. During the read-aloud questions (Day 2, Question #7) students are prompted to explain how animals help the plants in the garden (e.g., bees pollinate, worms stir soil, robins eat bugs). The wrapping-up prompts ask students to tell what animals need and how animals depend on plants for food and shelter, reinforcing connections between organisms.
Lesson 5
Discovering Animal Habitats
Students are prompted to refer to a text (Crinkleroot's Guide) and picture books/websites to identify habitats and animals (Getting Started; Activity 2). In Activity 1 students identify and describe the animals found in each habitat and draw additional animals, linking animals to specific habitats. In Activity 3 students are asked to discuss how animals' needs are met, add pictures showing what the animals eat and drink, and label animals and their food and water sources, connecting pieces of information about animals and habitats.
Lesson 6
Exploring Animal Habitats
The lesson asks students to make predictions and then compare their illustration/collage to those predictions after observing a habitat, which prompts students to connect prior ideas with new information. The skills list includes "Make connections through the use of oral language," and the wrap-up asks students how animals, plants, and insects live together, prompting discussion of relationships. Activity 2 directs students to locate more information about an animal in a book or online and share it, which gives an opportunity to use text-based information in discussion.
Lesson 8
Animal Care
Students listen to The Salamander Room and answer targeted questions such as "What kind of environment did the salamander need?" and "Could the boy give the salamander the kind of habitat it lived in when it was in the forest? Why or why not?" Activity 1 asks students to consider "What would happen if we didn't provide a healthy environment for our pets?" and the wrapping-up prompts ask students to compare a domestic animal and a nondomestic animal and discuss how an animal might feel if taken out of its habitat.
Lesson 9
Animal Designs
Students read captions and analyze each pictured animal and its habitat (Activity 1), then explain how specific body parts help the animal move. In Activity 2 students identify animals that do not belong in a pictured habitat and explain why each animal would not live there, recording their reasons. In Activity 3 students sort animals into habitats and say sentences such as, "A zebra can't live in the ocean. A zebra lives in the savanna," explicitly linking an animal to its habitat.
Lesson 10
Amazing Animals
Students read short informational passages and analyze how each animal changes to live and grow in its habitat (Activity 1), directly linking an individual animal to an environmental idea (camouflage, shedding, regrowing limbs). Students respond to scenario prompts (Activity 2) that ask what will happen after an event (e.g., a starfish losing an arm and then regrowing it) and to explain how a lizard uses color change to hide, connecting events/behaviors to outcomes. The wrap-up questions ask students to tell about animals they learned, prompting them to state connections between animals and their adaptations.
Lesson 11
Amazing Me
Students are asked in Activity 1 to respond to scenarios (cold, sun exposure, trouble seeing) and explain how they would change, connecting environmental events to bodily changes. In Activity 2 students read emotion words, look at pictures of environmental items (snake, flower, hurt elephant), and circle the face that shows how the item makes them feel, connecting environmental stimuli to feelings. In Activity 3 students think of a time they changed because of something in their environment, record those ideas on paper, and read them aloud, making an explicit link between an environmental cause and a personal change.
Final Project
Animal Research / My Environment
Students are asked to explain what habitats provide to animals (food, water, shelter) when prompted in the introduction and to review those ideas with gestures. In Option 2 students complete pages that link an animal to where it lives (shade regions on a globe), what it eats and drinks, and the animal's habitat, then label and explain those pages. Option 1 asks students to draw how they have changed to fit their environment or how the environment has changed them, prompting students to state a relationship between an individual and an environment.
Unit 2: Weather
Lesson 1
Reading the Skies
During the read-aloud of Whatever the Weather, students are asked questions such as "What type of weather is best for playing outside?" and "How does it make you feel when it rains? … When the sun is shining brightly?", which prompt them to link weather conditions to activities and feelings in the text. The Wrapping Up and Life Application sections ask students to describe seasons in pictures and discuss what a person might wear and what activities would be appropriate, prompting students to connect pieces of information (weather, clothing, and activities). The Weather Calendar activity has students record daily weather and relate it to activities over time, encouraging students to connect information across days.
Lesson 2
Types of Precipitation
Students are asked to find habitat pictures in Oh Say Can You Say What's the Weather Today? and describe each habitat's weather, linking habitats and weather conditions. During the Making Rain activity students are asked to describe what is happening to cause the rain and to explain what is happening in the sky when it is raining, linking the idea that warm, damp air meets cooler air to precipitation. In Wrapping Up students are asked why precipitation is important and where the water we drink comes from, connecting precipitation to community water supply.
Lesson 3
Measuring and Charting Weather
Students are asked to explain how weather affects living things (e.g., "Ask your child what she thinks would happen if an animal's habitat got too warm or cold"). The lesson prompts students to describe how rain provides water for plants and animals and to measure rainfall using a jar and ruler. Students are asked to look at Crinkleroot's Guide and describe what the weather can be like in different habitats and to discuss animal features that allow survival in those climates.
Lesson 4
Simulating Weather
In Activity 1, students are asked to name three things the wind can move and discuss what those things have in common, prompting them to connect the idea of wind with properties of objects. In Activity 2, students squeeze and release a bottle and are asked to explain what happens, linking the action (change in air pressure) to the appearance or disappearance of a cloud. In the Wrapping Up section, students are asked what happens in the sky to cause rain, connecting the idea that cool air meeting warm, damp air leads to precipitation.
Lesson 5
Fall
Students are asked to compare their outside fall environment to the picture on the "It's Fall!" page and to describe how it is similar and different. Students create and interpret a pictorial graph of leaf colors and answer questions about which color has the most, fewest, or equal quantities, connecting observations to the graph. Students write sentences about items in the fall scene and respond to prompts about what happens to the weather and activities in fall.
Lesson 6
Winter
In Activity 1, students are asked to find winter pages in the book Whatever the Weather, describe what they see in the pictures, and say how the environment in the pictures is similar to or different from the winter environment where they live. In Activity 3, students are asked how winter weather differs from summer and are shown a picture of the Earth and Sun so they can discuss that the Earth's tilt (leaning toward or away from the Sun) causes warmer or cooler seasons.
Lesson 7
Spring
Students are asked to read each poem, say what the poem was about, and draw a line from the poem to the picture that best tells the story, which connects text to an accompanying illustration. In the wind activity, students place a feather on their hand and are asked why it moved or did not move, prompting them to explain the link between wind (an idea/event) and the feather's motion. The facts and wrapping-up questions prompt students to state what a seed needs to become a plant, linking the idea of a seed to the conditions that cause growth.
Lesson 8
Summer
Students complete a fill-in-the-blank story about Jessie where they select words that link events (e.g., the sun was so hot that she had to go back to the hotel, and the pool cooled her off), which requires understanding cause-and-effect in the text. Students are asked directly, "Could these activities happen in the winter? Why or why not?", prompting them to relate the idea of seasons to types of activities. Students place seasons on a temperature continuum and complete comparative sentences (e.g., "Spring is warmer than ___"), which has them describe relationships between pieces of information about seasons.
Final Project
Weather Games
Students are asked to match seasons and clothing in Activity 1, cutting and gluing clothes onto pictures and identifying the season name for each picture, which requires connecting the idea of a season with appropriate clothing. In Activity 3 (Weather Window) students pick a page in a book that looks most similar to the weather outside and answer questions about temperature, wind, precipitation, and clouds, linking information in the text to real-world observations. Activity 4 asks students to reread pages about historical weather prediction and discuss how people have tried to predict weather and how instruments are used today, prompting comparison of two ideas from the text.
Unit 3: Community
Lesson 1
On the Town
After reading the story, students are asked why Charlie wrote down the places he visited and the names of people who worked in each place, prompting them to link Charlie's actions to information in the text. The lesson directs students to discuss how a healthy environment leads to a healthy community and that people work and live together helping each other, prompting connections between ideas presented. Activity 3 asks students to compare Charlie's journey to their own community and draw/write about a place Charlie could visit, which asks students to relate events/places from the text to another context.
Lesson 2
My Community Environment
Students read Me on the Map and are asked to identify streets, buildings, and the river and to discuss the purpose of each place and the people who work there. Students trace paths from one building to the next and answer questions about which buildings are nearer or farther, linking locations and functions. Students select three books with different types of communities, copy titles, draw illustrations, and discuss ways the communities are similar and different.
Lesson 3
Jobs in the Community
Students are asked to draw lines from each community worker to the place where he/she would work (Activity 1), which makes them connect a worker (individual) with a workplace (place). Students are prompted to say or write one simple sentence about how each worker helps citizens (Activity 5), which has them describe the relationship between a worker and the people or community he/she helps. Students are also instructed to read books about community workers and discuss how they help citizens (Activity 6), providing opportunities to identify connections in informational text.
Lesson 4
Goods and Services in the Community
Students are prompted to read labels and match buildings to the goods or services those buildings provide (Activity 1), connecting a place with the service or item it offers. Adults ask students how each named place helps people in the community during the introduction, prompting students to state relationships between places and their functions. In the wrapping up and Activity 2 discussions, students explain why people have jobs and how they use money, connecting the idea of work to earning and spending.
Lesson 5
Resources
Students read explicit definitions distinguishing resources, natural resources, and manmade resources. Students sort pictured items into "Natural" and "Manmade" categories (Activity 1) and label items as N or M while counting them (Activity 2). Students collect real objects (Activity 3) and explain where each resource is found and how it is used, and are asked to explain the difference between natural and manmade resources.
Lesson 6
A Good Community Citizen
Students are asked to read or listen to short scenarios (e.g., Frank leaving trash, Caleb helping a lost boy) and decide whether each person is being a good citizen and explain how they made that decision. The opening question "How and why does a healthy environment lead to a healthy community?" prompts students to describe a connection between two ideas. The sorting and drawing activities (Good/Not Good Home Environment and family pages) require students to link specific behaviors or people to the idea of a good or not-good home environment.
Lesson 7
A Citizen with Character
Students are asked to read stories (e.g., "A Lesson in Honesty" and "The Boy Who Cried Wolf") and answer questions about what will happen next and what the moral or consequences are. In Activity 6, students record characters' actions in a left column and draw arrows to consequences in a right column, then describe those consequences. The skills list includes "Discover relationships in stories," and several activities require students to explain why a character's actions led to particular outcomes.
Lesson 8
Rules and Laws
Students read statements and decide whether each is a rule, a law, or both, then paste items on two webs with connecting lines for statements that apply to both categories (Activity 2). Students listen to or read the story "The House with No Rules" and answer questions about what happens in that house, what they would like or dislike, and whether they would stay, linking the absence of rules to specific consequences (Activity 3). The wrap-up asks students to explain why homes have rules and communities have laws, prompting them to state relationships between the ideas of rules, laws, safety, and happiness.
Lesson 9
Caring for Our Communities
Students read the story "When One Person Cares" and are asked directly, "Does Katy help the people in her community? How?" which prompts them to connect Katy's action (planting seeds) with the community's reaction (people stop to look, take pictures, pick weeds, and feel joy). In Activity 2 students compare two pictured communities and mark behaviors that make a community good or bad, linking actions/ideas (littering, caring for gardens) to community quality. Activity 3 asks students to choose three things that make their community happy and explain why, prompting them to state connections between ideas and community health.
2: Similarities and Differences
Unit 1: Amazing Attributes
Lesson 2
Animal Attributes
Students are asked to get two stuffed animals and explain how they are alike and different, which requires describing connections between two individuals. In Activity 1 students circle living things on labeled pages and are prompted to describe how they know an object is living, linking characteristics (pieces of information) to items. In Activity 2 students identify animal body parts from pictures and discuss how those parts help animals move, connecting body-part information to animal actions.
Lesson 3
Size, Shape, and Color
Students are prompted to compare a metal spoon and a wooden mixing spoon and to describe how the two objects are similar and different. The Facts and Definitions section lists color-mixing relationships (red + blue = purple, blue + yellow = green, red + yellow = orange) and Activity 3 asks students to explain what makes purple, green, and orange and to describe what they learned about mixing colors. The Shape activity and Student Activity Page require students to match shape names and outlines to real-world objects, prompting students to connect shape labels with example objects.
Lesson 5
How Old?
Students are asked to order family pictures from oldest to youngest and from youngest to oldest (Activity 1), which has them identify and describe the relationship between two individuals by age. In Activity 2 students match age numbers to pictured people by drawing lines or pasting numbers, explicitly connecting a person (individual) with a piece of information (age). Activity 3 has students find animals' average life spans and put the cards in order from shortest to longest, which asks students to compare and describe connections between different pieces of information (animal and lifespan). The introduction and wrap-up prompt students to discuss how age relates to other attributes (height, weight), prompting them to describe connections between the ideas of age and size.
Lesson 6
The Measure of Things
Students complete sentence frames such as "The ___ is longer than the ___" and "The longest item is the ___," which require them to state relationships between two objects. Students compare and order objects by weight and capacity (e.g., circling the heavier object, ordering glasses from heaviest to lightest). Students are asked to describe how sugar, water, and milk are similar and different and to explain differences between length, weight, and capacity.
Lesson 8
Amazing Attributes
The lesson asks students to "Relate this information to the items your child chose for his experiment" and to "Discuss the term 'density' and how the density of an object determines whether the object sinks or floats," which requires linking the idea of density (from the video/text) to experimental outcomes. Students are prompted to predict which objects will sink or float, test them, then "compare the way the objects are sorted to his prediction" and "discuss which predictions were correct and which were incorrect," which asks them to describe relationships between their predictions and observed events. The Sink or Float activity also directs students to "look for similarities among the objects that floated and those that sank" and to "examine whether the size or weight of an object determined whether it would sink or float," prompting them to connect attributes to outcomes.
Lesson 9
Solids and Liquids
Students are asked to write down definitions for "solid" and "liquid" and then use those definitions to sort and paste pictures into "Solid" and "Liquid" columns, which requires linking the definition (a piece of information) to example images. Students are prompted to explain differences between solids and liquids and to discuss why an ice cube changed to water and why water in the freezer turned to ice, which asks them to state the cause–effect connection (heat/cold causes state change). The sugar activity asks students to compare poured behavior to grain-level properties, prompting them to relate the idea that individual particles keep their shape to the observable pouring behavior.
Lesson 10
Earth Materials: Rocks, Soil, and Water
Day 2 reading questions ask students to compare two texts and specifically ask "How is the writing in the two books similar?" and "How are the characters similar and different?" The Skills list explicitly includes "Identify basic similarities in and differences between two texts" and "Compare and contrast the adventures and experiences of characters." Earlier reading questions ask students to explain "What role do solids and liquids play in the book," prompting them to describe connections between ideas in the text.
Lesson 11
Using Earth Materials
The lesson asks the child to describe the three Earth materials she explored previously and to think about how rocks are used after watching the rock video, prompting students to link rock types to uses. Activities direct students to discuss soil properties that make soil good or not ideal for plant growth, prompting a connection between soil attributes and plant development. The gardening activity and wrap-up prompt students to discuss that plants need soil and provide oxygen, linking the idea of soil properties to plant survival and the role of plants in supporting life.
Unit 2: Senses
Lesson 1
My Five Senses
After reading My Five Senses, students are asked targeted questions that require them to link information in the text (e.g., identify which body part is used for each sense and which senses recognize a shape or color). The Senses Webs activity has students cut or sort pictures/words and place them on webs labeled with each sense, explicitly connecting objects or words from the text to the appropriate sense. Activity 3 asks students to describe a sensing experience in sentences and to state the primary sense and sense organ used, tying descriptive information together across parts of the text and personal experience.
Lesson 2
Senses and Body Parts
In Option 1 students listen to the story "Jackie's Day at the Pet Store" and, when Jackie uses a sense, pick up and glue the corresponding body part on her face, linking events in the text (Jackie smelling, hearing, touching, tasting, seeing) to the sense organs. In Option 2 students plan a story with a beginning, middle, and end and pause as they narrate to glue the sense organ when Jackie uses a sense, connecting story events and sequence to sensory information. Activity 2 asks students to read situations and point to the sense organ they would use, connecting pieces of information in short scenarios to the appropriate senses.
Lesson 3
Smelling and Tasting
Students are asked in Activity 1 to explain how their sense of smell helped them decide whether or not to taste a food and to compare whether foods that smelled good always tasted good, which asks them to describe a connection between the ideas of smell and taste. In Activity 2 students record four people's yes/no responses in a survey chart and then answer which flavor people liked most and least, which requires describing connections between people and pieces of information in the chart. Activity 4 asks students to write a sentence reporting survey results ("________ people liked ________"), reinforcing describing relationships between survey subjects and tastes.
Lesson 4
Hearing and Seeing
Students reread pages 12–19 and draw a line representing light rays from cornea to retina to optic nerve and tape a brain to show how the retina sends nerve signals to the brain, directly linking pieces of information from the text. Students reread pages 21–27, label parts of the ear, and explain how vibrations travel from the eardrum through the hammer/anvil/stirrup and cochlea to the auditory nerve, describing connections among parts shown in the text. Students listen to short spoken descriptions and use auditory details to identify the place being described, connecting information in a text-like narration to a location.
Lesson 5
Touch
Students match pictured items to descriptive words in the "Touch It" activity, choosing adjectives that describe how objects feel. In the "Touch Chart" activity students check boxes to show which tactile attributes (hot, cold, wet, dry, hard, soft) apply to given items and draw and label their own items to compare attributes. The Getting Started prompts ask students to consider how senses help find similarities and differences, and the Feel It! and Sensory Art activities ask students to describe how items feel and which senses they used.
Lesson 6
Experimenting With Our Senses
In Activity 1, students taste colored drinks, record descriptions before and after being blindfolded, and are asked why their answers differed and whether they can "taste color," prompting them to describe the relationship between sight (color) and taste. Activity 2 asks students to scratch and sniff spice cards and to decide whether a smell implies a flavor, linking the ideas of smell and taste. The Wrapping Up questions ask students to explain how their senses help them make decisions and to identify similarities and differences, prompting them to state connections among ideas (senses, decisions, similarities).
Lesson 7
Using All of Our Senses
The lesson directs an adult to read pages 21–end of My Five Senses and then ask which senses the boy in the story used and how he used each sense, prompting students to link a character to ideas in the text. The "Books and Senses" activity asks students to look through books and identify ways characters use their senses, which has students extract information about characters' actions. Activity 1 and the Nature Walk ask students to identify and compare which senses are used in different situations and to decide which situation uses the most or fewest senses, prompting comparison across pieces of information.
Lesson 8
Writing About Our Senses
Students complete the "A Sensible Report" activity in which they describe popcorn before and after popping, writing sensory words in paired blanks and drawing the two states. In "Sensing Logic" students read or hear textual clues and use those pieces of information to eliminate pictures and identify the single matching item. The skills list explicitly includes "Compare attributes of two objects," which signals student practice comparing two things.
Final Project
A Sensible Party
Students are prompted in Game 1 to compare their own party plan with the sample Party Planner to find similarities and differences. The Party Planner student pages present two pieces of information (ideas and supplies for each of the five senses) that students can compare side-by-side. Wrap-up questions ask students to describe how guests used their senses to find similarities and differences, prompting students to state connections between two pieces of information.
Unit 3: We're the Same, We're Different
Lesson 1
You're Special
Students complete the "Your Numbers" page by recording personal numerical information and are then asked to compare how their numbers are similar to and different from a parent or sibling, which has them describe connections between two individuals using information in a text. Students fill in the "You Are Special" activity and complete a short personal paragraph, read it aloud, and discuss what they like about their story, which prompts them to relate information about themselves to others (for example, comparing likes, traits, or aspirations). The introduction questions prompt students to state in what ways they are like or different from friends or siblings, encouraging them to describe relationships between two individuals or ideas.
Lesson 2
Physical Characteristics
Students listen to the read-aloud 'Different Friends' and answer explicit comprehension questions that ask them to retell the story, describe what happened at the beginning, middle, and end, and explain whether Susan and Casey are friends and why. Students cut apart and order event boxes from the story, which requires them to connect and sequence events. Students compare the two characters' physical characteristics and answer questions about similarities and differences, directly relating two individuals in the text.
Lesson 3
Different Personalities
Activity 2 has students write their name and a friend/sibling's name, add personality words for each, circle the words they have in common, count matching words, and verbally describe how they are alike and different. Activity 3 asks students to record main characters from a movie or cartoon and assign two personality words to each character, supporting comparison of character traits.
Lesson 5
Shapesville
Students are asked to identify the shape of each character in the story and to describe each one's physical characteristics (color, sides, angles, eye color) and personalities and interests. The teacher prompts students with questions such as "How are the shapes' personalities different?" and "What are some of the interests of the shapes?" In Activity 2 students select the shape they are most similar to and explain why, and in Activity 3 students choose a shape to represent each family member and explain their selections.
Lesson 6
Different Families
Students read specified pages of A Life Like Mine and identify pictures of families in the text, describing clothing, activities, and interactions. Students complete the 'Families Around the World' sentence-stem worksheet that prompts them to state connections ("My family is similar to a family from _______ because we both _______") and differences. Students also complete an option using a Venn diagram to list and illustrate ways their family and a family in the text are the same and different, and respond to wrap-up questions about similarities and differences.
Lesson 7
Different Homes
Students are asked to identify and describe the different homes shown in A Life Like Mine (pages 26–35) and to answer why people have homes, which requires them to connect the idea that homes provide shelter with the idea that homes are places for families to gather. Students are prompted to identify materials used to build homes in the text and to explain that people build differently depending on the natural resources and environment, connecting information about materials and environment to types of homes. Activity 2 asks students to find countries where particular home types appear and record country names, linking the idea of a home type to a geographic place in the text or related sources.
Lesson 8
Different Holidays and Traditions
Students match specific traditions to named holidays (Activity 1), directly connecting a practice with its event. Students look up holidays in encyclopedias and websites and discuss similarities and differences, using information from texts to compare celebrations (Activity 2). Students write sentences such as "On ___ we celebrate by ___" and put holiday pages in chronological order, linking holiday events to dates and reasons (Activity 5).
Lesson 9
Different Modes of Transportation
Students are asked to look through books/websites and find examples of transportation in pictures (Introduction), which prompts them to link pictured information to transportation ideas. In Activity 2 students decide what mode of transportation is best from Point A to Point B and number scenarios from closest to farthest, which requires connecting information about distance/locations to appropriate transportation choices. In Activity 1 students draw a box around each mode of transportation they have taken and talk about where they went, connecting personal experience to pictured modes.
Lesson 10
Wants and Needs
Students are asked to read specific pages (46–51, 56–61, 66–71) and discuss why children need education, play, and love, which has them describe connections between ideas presented in the text (children and their needs). In Activity 4 students survey four people, record wants and needs, complete two webs (one for wants, one for needs), and discuss whether items named are truly needs or wants, which has them compare and relate pieces of information gathered. In Activity 5 students draw items that provide for a boy's water, food, shelter, education, love and health, which has them link a specific individual to the needs described.
Lesson 11
Being Part of a Group
Students read pages 98–113 of A Life Like Mine and discuss what identity, nationality, and religion mean and how their own nationality or religion is similar to and different from the children in the book. In Activity 1 students cut out pictures of children, sort them into groups, and answer comparative questions (Which group has the most people? Do two groups have the same number?). In Activity 2 students draw members of a group and complete sentences such as "The members in the group are alike because ___," which requires stating connections between group members and ideas.
Final Project
Differences Make the World Go 'Round
Students are prompted to read about a child from another country in a book or on the Internet and then create a book comparing themselves to that child. They complete sentence stems on Student Activity Pages for location, food, hobbies, homes, clothing, transportation, and holidays (for example: "I live in America. Jung Wei lives in China." and "One way that we are the same is that we both like to __________."). The pages include a dedicated "Similarities" prompt and multiple paired prompts that require students to state how they and the other child are alike or different.
3: Patterns
Unit 2: Patterns in Sounds, Words, and Actions
Lesson 1
Word Patterns
Activity 4 directs students to reread Bear Hugs, copy or dictate the names of animals from the text, and identify the habitat where each animal lives. Students are instructed to cut out the animal names and sort them into groups according to the habitats, which requires linking each animal (an individual) to habitat information from the text. The instructions include prompts to encourage or ask the child to identify habitats, providing adult support during the task.
Lesson 2
Making Word Patterns
Students are asked in Activity 3 to identify and record words from picture books that have the same sound pattern and to identify groups of words that follow the same spelling patterns or rhyme without the same spelling. Activities 1 and 2 have students complete rhyming sentences and sort/cut words into word-family groups, which requires them to connect words by shared sound and spelling patterns.
Lesson 5
Story Patterns
The lesson asks students to identify and sequence events by naming what happened at the beginning, middle, and end of a story and to use words such as "before" and "after" to describe relative position. Activities have students predict what will happen next, glue or draw pictures in order, and dictate sentences describing each event, which requires linking events in sequence. The example story about the boy and his older brother provides an event sequence (brother hides, boy is startled, boy realizes it was a prank) that students can describe and connect.
Final Project
Patterns Video
Students are prompted to write or dictate a script that records the type of pattern, where they found or made it, the parts of the pattern, and how the parts create each pattern. The story-pattern and other activity pages require students to sequence elements using prompts like "First comes... Then... Then...", which has students describe the order of events or steps. The guidance asks students to read words from a book or poem and "explain the pattern," which asks them to describe connections among pieces of text.
Unit 3: Patterns in Your World
Lesson 1
Patterns in Nature
Students read pages 1-11 of Pattern and are asked to identify and describe the pattern in each picture. Students cut out pattern samples and paste them on the appropriate animal (Option 1) or create patterns for each pictured animal (Option 2), which requires linking a pattern to an animal. Students are asked whether there were patterns they had seen before and to name other patterns, connecting book examples to their own observations.
Lesson 2
Patterns of Growth
Students sequence and describe stages of growth by cutting and ordering pictures of a person, a dog, and a plant (Activity 4). Students are asked to explain that offspring follow the same growth pattern as their parents and to discuss similarities across life cycles (humans, dogs, plants). Students are prompted to compare typical life cycles with unusual ones (butterfly, frog) and to describe what makes those life cycles unique. The wrap-up asks students to describe the growth pattern of a plant and a person, prompting them to state connections between those two ideas.
Lesson 3
Night and Day
Students manipulate a globe/ball and flashlight to show that when their location faces the light it is daytime and when it turns away it is nighttime, explicitly linking the Earth's rotation (an idea/event) to day and night. Students are asked to describe when it is daytime and nighttime and to "explain the pattern of night and day," prompting them to state the connection between the rotation and the repeating ABAB pattern. Students draw scenes for "During the Day" and "At Night" and write or dictate sentences explaining activities that occur at those times, connecting activities (pieces of information) to day or night.
Lesson 4
Daily Routines
The Introduction asks reviewing that the Earth spins and that its position to the Sun creates day and night, which links two ideas (Earth's position and day/night). Activity 3 has students record times and pair each time with an activity across a typical day, requiring students to relate a time (piece of information) to an event. Activity 2 asks students to break a routine into four ordered steps and dictate/write sentences about each step, which has students connect sequential events.
Lesson 5
Calendar Patterns
Activity 4 directs students to record family activities on a calendar and to look across months to find events that occur weekly, biweekly, or monthly, asking them to record each pattern they find. Activity 2 has students connect numbers, number words, and tally marks in a chart, explicitly linking pieces of information. Activity 3 has students record and order dates (day of week, month, year) and put date cards in sequence, which requires connecting the parts of a date.
Lesson 6
Seasonal Weather Patterns
Students use a laminated calendar to identify the date and circle the weather for the day, linking the day/month to a weather condition. In Activity 1 and the Student Activity Page, students cut seasons apart, put them in order, fill in missing seasons, and answer questions that link specific months to seasons (e.g., which month comes after March, which season comes before summer). In Activity 3 students record a weather word beneath the season it describes and paste months beneath the season and weather pattern connected with each month, explicitly connecting pieces of information (month ↔ season ↔ weather). The Weather Geography activity has students examine a map and describe how location (state) connects to different weather patterns.
Lesson 8
Symmetrical Patterns
Students are asked to look at a picture of a butterfly and describe the pattern in the wings and whether the wings look the same or different, which prompts them to relate the idea of symmetry to a specific example. In Activity 1 students fold letters vertically and horizontally and are told to note when halves lie on top of each other, linking the action of folding to the idea that halves match. In Activity 2 students sort shapes into symmetrical and non-symmetrical groups and then compare counts, connecting the classification information to numerical comparisons.
Lesson 11
Patterns in Graphs
Students read titles and labels on bar graphs and charts, discuss the data, and are asked to describe patterns (e.g., color the days when John read two books and the days he read three, then predict how many books John would read the following Tuesday). On the chart activity, students color-code names by gender and shirt-color boxes, answer "What does this chart tell us?" (identifying which shirt color each child wore), and count types (boys/girls, shirt colors). Activity 3 asks students to color repeating parts of graphs and to describe patterns using labels like ABAB, AABB, or ABC, connecting pieces of information across the display.
Final Project
Patterns All Around Lapbook
Students create a 3-flap book showing stages of growth (baby/child/adult or seed/plant/flower) and label each stage, which requires them to represent how stages relate. Students assemble a wheel book that requires them to place and label the four seasons in the correct order, showing cyclical connections. Students make a fan book of the days of the week in order and several mini-books that require choosing and placing patterns (e.g., patterns in nature, fabric) into organized slots.
4: Change
Unit 1: Changes on Planet Earth
Lesson 1
What Causes Change?
The lesson asks students to match before-and-after picture cards and decide what changed, prompting them to identify cause and effect relationships. Activity instructions tell students to explain that a cause makes something happen and the effect is the result, and to find cause-and-effect examples in their homes. Activity 3 has students draw before/after pictures and complete the sentence "________ changed because ________," explicitly asking them to describe the connection between an event and its cause.
Lesson 2
What Changed?
Students read Part 1: Things Change and answer guided questions about examples and classifications of changes (e.g., identifying physical vs. chemical changes and examples on specific pages). In Activity 2 (How Did It Change?) students compare pairs of images (before and after) and determine which attributes changed (weight, color, size, amount, location). The extension asks students to identify changes in the community and to describe the cause of the change and whether it is positive, negative, or neither.
Lesson 3
Changing Position
Students are asked questions that require connecting ideas in the text, e.g., QUESTION #1 asks how objects start moving (answer: a push or a pull) and QUESTION #4 asks what force keeps us on Earth (gravity). Activity 6 prompts students to explain why objects tossed up come back down and to identify center of gravity, which asks them to link the idea of gravity to observable events. Activity 1 has students locate the words "gravity" and "inertia" in the index and copy the sentences from the book, providing access to multiple pieces of information about related ideas.
Lesson 4
Changes in the Environment
Students are asked in Activity 1 to read scenarios and explain how a change in weather would cause them to change their activities, directly connecting an event (weather change) to a consequence (behavior change). In Activity 2 students read "Part 2: Seasons Change" and answer questions that link specific changes (water freezing/evaporating, pupa to butterfly, leaf growth/photosynthesis) to types of change, connecting ideas across pages. The Wrapping Up prompt asks students to describe environmental changes, explain what causes them, and explain how those changes can cause people to change what they are doing, which requires stating relationships between pieces of information.
Lesson 5
Changes in Location
Students complete sentence prompts (e.g., "The cat is ___ the door") using prepositions from a word box and/or by writing full prepositional phrases, showing the spatial connection between two items in the picture. Students move a cut-out mouse to positions described by read-aloud sentences (e.g., "The mouse is under the coffee table"), and then may write sentences describing those locations. In the Nature Relations activity, students go outside or look out a window and record three or four sentences that describe the relationship of one object to another (e.g., "The bush is beside the tree").
Lesson 6
Changes in the Sky
Students are asked to discuss why the Sun is important to our planet and connect sunlight to plant growth, food, and oxygen in Activity 1. Students are prompted to explain that the Moon does not produce its own light but is illuminated by the Sun, linking two pieces of information about the Sun and Moon. In Activity 2 and the Wrapping Up section, students physically demonstrate and describe how the Earth revolves around the Sun, how the Moon revolves around the Earth, and how the Earth's rotation causes day and night. The Earth/Moon/Sun model activity asks students to use a constructed model to show and explain the relationships and movements among the three bodies.
Lesson 7
Living Things Change
Students review specific pages from the informational text Changes Happen All Around You and are asked to explain how and why the lizard changed between two pictured scenes, including the concept of camouflage. In Activity 2, students examine paired images and answer explicit questions (Did it change in size? number? shape? place?) and circle words that describe the connection between the before and after pictures. In Activity 3 students produce paired drawings (before and after) or cut-and-paste picture pairs to show the change, and in Activity 4 students write or copy a sentence describing how something changes in size.
Lesson 8
Plants and Change
After reading pages 4-7 of National Geographic Readers: Seed to Plant, students are asked "How are plants similar to and different from animals?" which requires them to describe a connection (similarities and differences) between two living things presented in the text. The Activities and Wrapping Up prompt students to find the table of contents entry "What Do Plants Need?", read pages about needs, and then describe what plants need in order to grow and change, linking two pieces of information in the book (needs → growth). Activity 6 has students make predictions based on text information about plant needs and then compare observations to those predictions, reinforcing connections between text information and outcomes.
Lesson 9
Heat Causes Change
Students are asked to review specific pages (14-15 and 18-19) in the book Changes Happen All Around You and discuss observations about burning, which connects text content to real-world events. During activities, students observe ice melting to water and water turning to steam, then are asked to explain why those changes happened, linking the idea of heat to those events. In the wrap-up and life-application sections, students are prompted to explain how heat caused the ice, water, candle, and cake to change, explicitly asking them to describe relationships between the idea of heat and the observed events.
Lesson 10
Chemical Changes
Students are prompted to categorize paired scenarios on the activity page (e.g., apple/chopped apple, cupcake batter/cupcake) and to label each as a chemical or physical change. After completing the sheet, students are asked to explain how they made each decision, which requires them to connect each example to the idea of chemical versus physical change. The wrapping up prompt asks students to describe the difference between a physical and a chemical change and to give an example of each, asking for an explicit description of the relationship between the two ideas.
Lesson 11
People Change the Environment
Activity 3 asks students to describe what is happening in each illustration and explain how each human action is changing the environment, then decide whether the change is positive, negative, or neutral. Activity 2 asks students to discuss how reducing, reusing, and recycling help the environment and to sort pictured items into recycle or trash bins after watching a video. Activity 1 has students generate and compare lists of "Positive Change" and "Negative Change," with an adult recording ideas as the child dictates them.
Final Project
Mobile of Change
Students create paired "before" and "after" pictures for categories (Animal Change, Plant Change, Physical Change, Chemical Change) and fill a grid that labels "before" and "after" for Changes in Position, Location, Environment, and Sky. Students glue paired boxes to shapes and arrange them on a mobile, and they are asked to explain how each part of the mobile shows a change. The wrapping-up prompts ask students to tell family members what they learned about changes and to explain their examples of change.
Unit 2: Characters Change
Lesson 1
What's in a Name
Students answer explicit comprehension questions that ask them to connect events and people (e.g., QUESTION #2 asks why Chrysanthemum changed her mind about her name; QUESTION #4 asks how Mrs. Twinkle changed the students' feelings). Activity 5 (Characters Change) asks students to list traits at the beginning and end of the story and to write short sentences explaining how and why Chrysanthemum changed. Activity 3 (Feeling Phrases) and QUESTION #3 ask students to interpret phrases and draw a connection between words/actions and characters' feelings or effects on others.
Lesson 2
Why Worry?
Students are asked to compare Wemberly and Chrysanthemum and discuss how both characters change (Activity 2). The Characters Change activity page prompts students to write how Wemberly was at the beginning and at the end, complete the sentence "Before Wemberly was ____, but now she is ____," and answer "Wemberly changed because...". Reading comprehension questions also ask students to explain whether Wemberly needed to be worried and why, connecting events and outcomes in the story.
Lesson 3
Is It a Problem?
Students are asked to compare the boy in What Do You Do With a Problem? with Wemberly in Activity 5 (Characters Change), prompting them to state how the two individuals are similar and different and to complete sentence frames such as "Before the boy was ___ but now he is ___." Activity 4 (Beginning, Middle, and End) has students identify and order events from the stories, linking story parts across texts. Reading questions and Activities 1 and 2 ask students to track how the problem grows, how the boy faces it, and what opportunity it reveals, prompting students to connect events and ideas (e.g., worry → problem grows → facing it → opportunity).
Lesson 4
Comparing Characters
Students use Venn diagrams in Activities 1 and 2 to write similarities and differences between two characters (Chrysanthemum vs. Wemberly; Wemberly vs. the Boy with a Problem). In Activity 3 students dictate three‑sentence summaries for two stories and answer the explicit question "How are the characters' situations similar?" and "What can we learn from both characters?" Activity 4 has students match causes and effects drawn from the stories, connecting events and results.
Lesson 5
The Raft
Students are asked to identify problem and solution for each story (Activity 7) and match problems to their solutions, which requires linking an event/issue to its resolution. In Activity 8 and the wrapping-up discussion, students compare the boy at the beginning and end and explain what caused his change, prompting them to describe the connection between events and character change. Activity 1 asks students to find other stories where the character tells the story, asking them to compare narrators across texts and thereby connect information about who is telling each story.
Lesson 6
Positive and Negative Change
Students cut apart and match cause-and-effect statements on the "Matching Cause and Effect" activity pages and label each pair as a positive or negative effect. Students are asked to identify a positive and a negative cause-and-effect situation from stories they read. In Activity 2 and Activity 3, students explain how the rat changes because of the horse and dictate or write sentences and illustrations describing what caused a character's change and how choices affected outcomes.
Final Project
My Own Story
The Part 4 "Problem and Solution" activity asks students to answer "What caused the problem?", "How did the character get to the solution?", and "How does the character change from the beginning to the end of the story?", prompting students to link events and outcomes. The instructions direct students to discuss how the character will change as a result of the problem and solution, requiring explanation of causal connections. Part 2 asks students to decide whether a character causes the problem or whether a circumstance is the problem, linking individuals' actions to events.
Unit 3: A First Look at History - Change Over Time
Lesson 1
People and Families Change
Students put personal and family pictures in chronological order (Activity 1 and Activity 4) and answer comparison questions about how they and their family members were different at two points in time. Students create and read a growth chart marking heights at different ages and answer questions that compare growth between two years. Students complete the "Writing About Change" page with prompts such as "Then __________ changed," "The biggest change I see is __________," and "Now my family is __________," which asks them to relate past and present information.
Lesson 2
Understanding Time
Students are asked to read pages of Telling Time and respond to questions that classify events as past, present, or future (e.g., "Were you born in the past, present, or future?"; "Did dinosaurs live in the past, present, or future?"). Students complete a three-box activity ("Yesterday I," "Today I," "Tomorrow I will") that has them record and illustrate events across time and use a calendar to name today/yesterday/tomorrow dates. The skills list explicitly includes "Connect information and events in text to own experience (LA)," and activities ask students to order events and dates (Ordering Numbers, Measuring Time) to show temporal relationships.
Lesson 3
Communities Change
Students are asked to place events from The House on Maple Street in chronological order (Activity 2), which requires them to connect events in the text by time. In Activity 3 students identify the communities (Native American boy, pioneer girl, townspeople), number them in order, and point out differences in transportation, clothing, homes, and activities, linking individuals across time. Activity 6 has students identify artifacts in the story and associate those objects with people from the past, connecting pieces of information to individuals.
Lesson 4
Past and Present
Students read paired character profiles from two different time periods (Activity 3) and are asked explicit comparison questions such as "How are the kids from the two time periods different?" and "Are there any ways that you and the young people in the book are the same?". Students complete the "How Am I Different?" page (Activity 4) with prompts like "One way the young person is different from me is" and "One way we are the same is," requiring them to state connections between two individuals. Students also compare homes, transportation, clothing, and school across time periods in a four-column grid (Activity 5) and sort advantages/disadvantages of the past, which asks them to connect pieces of information across time; the Skills list explicitly includes "Connect information and events in text to own experience."
Lesson 5
Exploring the Past
Students are asked to evaluate how the lives of individuals and families of the past are different from today and to recognize that history relates to people, events, and places, which prompts comparison between past and present. Students cut out pictures of cultures and place them in chronological order on a timeline, reinforcing relationships of earlier vs. later. Students look through pages about homes, clothes, food, and transport and draw/write or dictate descriptions of information from the text for each culture.
Lesson 6
Predicting Future Change
Students read short written scenarios (for example, "Your dad has gotten a new job in a different town") and are asked to identify what changed and to predict how that change will affect family members or others. Students answer prompts that link events to effects on individuals (questions like "How will this change your parents?" and "How might this change how the old friend feels about you?") and record their ideas in writing. Students reflect on a personal change, dictate and read a description of how an event caused that change, and write or copy sentences connecting the change to its result.
Lesson 7
People of the Past
Students read simple biographies and answer questions that ask them to relate themselves to the historical person (Activity 1: "Are you similar to this person in any way?"). Students match descriptions to pictures and glue descriptions beneath the correct individual's picture, directly linking pieces of information to specific people (Activity 2). Students place the historical figures in chronological order and are prompted to discuss where a person from the biography would fit in relation to the others, which asks them to describe a connection between individuals.
Final Project
My Past, Present and Future
Students are prompted to write or dictate paired statements labeled "In the past..." and "Today..." on the "Elements of Culture" pages, comparing a chosen time period to the present. Several activity pages ask students to complete parallel prompts for past, present, and future (e.g., "My family was different in the past because..." and "Now my family is...") and to illustrate each side. Option 2 explicitly directs students to select three cultural elements and record descriptions for the past and for today, supporting comparison of two pieces of information.
6: Reading
Unit 1: Semester 1
Lesson 2
Letter Sounds Review II
In Activity 5.3 students read the reader The Pig Can and are asked, "Do you think the pig and the cat can fit in the box?" and to "explain her thinking," which prompts a connection between two characters and an event. The teacher models reading questions (rising intonation for questions) and points out sentence-ending punctuation to support comprehension. These steps give a direct, prompted opportunity for the child to describe a relationship found in a text.
Lesson 3
Letter Sounds Review III
In Activity 5.2 (Reader #3 — The Bug), students read the book and answer comprehension questions that ask what the bug is able to do, what the bug wants to do, and why he can't do that, prompting students to link the bug's actions, desires, and reasons. In Activity 1.1 (Weekly Message #3), students are asked to use the hint in the message to identify which vowel they will work with, asking them to connect an idea (the hint) to a piece of information (the vowel).
Lesson 4
Letter Sounds Review IV
Students read The Cat, the Pig, the Dog, and the Fox and are then asked explicit comprehension questions that require connecting characters and actions. Activity 5.2 asks, "Why are the dog and the fox napping at the end of the book?" and "Why aren't the cat and the pig napping?" which prompts students to link the events of running and sitting to the characters' states. Students are also prompted to point to words as they read, supporting use of text to explain those connections.
Lesson 5
Adding s, More Word Families, Ending with ck
Students read the reader Ducks Are Fun and are asked "Which duck do you think is having the most fun? Why?," prompting them to state a relationship between a character and an idea or event. Students sort and glue words into word-family columns (an/ab/ag, am/ad, ack/eck/ick/ock/uck), actively connecting each word to its common ending. Students add s to singular words (e.g., cat → cats) and practice writing plural words to connect the idea of number with a change in word form.
Lesson 7
Consonant Digraphs ch, sh, wh, ph
In Activity 3.3 students read the short book They Get Wet and are asked specific comprehension prompts: "Where is the ship at the beginning of the book?", "Why are the rat and the cat wet at the end? (a wave hits them)", and "Why do you think the rat and the cat are on the ship?" These prompts require students, with prompting and support, to connect characters (the rat and the cat) to events (the wave and being on the ship) and to give reasons for those connections.
Lesson 8
Blends with s
Students read the reader "Meg and Dan and the Sled" and are asked specific comprehension questions that require linking events (e.g., "Near the end, why are Meg and Dan no longer on the sled?" expecting the response that they fell off because they hit a spot and slid). The teacher prompts include asking why the characters stop for a snack, which asks students to connect an event (stopping) with a reason (snacking). The reader activity instructs students to read on their own and then answer these targeted questions with prompting and support.
Lesson 12
Double ll, ss, ff, zz (FLOSS)
In Activity 4.3 students read the reader "Huff and Puff" and are asked: "What insects are shown in the book?", "Why do you think the insects are following the kids?", and "Why is everyone huffing and puffing at the end of the book?" These questions prompt students to identify individuals/events in the text and explain connections (insects following kids; cause of huffing/puffing). In Activity 2.1 students answer three guiding questions to decide whether words follow the FLOSS rule, linking pieces of information (syllable, vowel sound, final letter) to a spelling outcome.
Lesson 13
Glued Sounds ng and nk
Students read the Reader #13 (King Hank) and answer comprehension questions such as "Where do the king and his friends sleep?" which asks them to identify a relationship between two individuals. Students also write and read dictated sentences (e.g., "The ring is on her hand.", "Hank drank from the well.") that state connections between objects/events. These activities require students to locate and state simple connections in short texts or sentences.
Lesson 17
Semester Review
In Activity 4.1 students are asked to point to or name characters in readers and to talk about the different things those characters do (e.g., they swim, they camp, they sing, they go on a raft trip). The Planning My Reader page (Activity 4.2) has sections for "Characters" and "What Characters Do," requiring students to note characters and their actions when planning their own reader. Activity 4.1 also asks students to explain why a reader is their favorite, which can prompt linking a character's actions or events to a personal response.
Unit 2: Semester 2
Lesson 1
Long Vowels a and i with Silent e
Students read the reader In the Fall and are asked comprehension questions that require relating two characters' actions (e.g., "What does Lin do while Dev makes cakes?"). Students are also asked to list things both Lin and Dev like to do in the fall, which requires comparing activities for two individuals. The activities prompt students to point to and read words in the text before answering these questions.
Lesson 4
More R-Controlled Vowels (er, ir, or, ur)
Students read The Bird Is Third and answer comprehension questions asking who won the race and which animal came in last, which requires them to identify relationships among characters and race outcomes. Students are asked follow-up questions ("Are you surprised that the cat won the race? Who did you think would win? Why?") that prompt them to relate their expectation to the event in the text. In the Life Application activity, students match ordinal words (first, second, third, fourth) to positions in a line of objects, connecting the idea of ordinal words to specific positions/events.
Lesson 6
Long e Spellings ee, ey, ea
On Day 5 students read the reader What Do You Eat? and answer questions such as "What does the worm eat?" and "How many beans are the birds eating?", which requires recalling pieces of information from the text. In Activity 2.1 students compare the words "see" and "sea," noting that they sound the same but mean different things, and they highlight different long-e spellings and note where each spelling appears in words. Activity 4.2 has students build sentences from word cards, which asks them to combine ideas into simple sentence-level meaning.
Lesson 7
Long i Spellings y, igh, ie
Students read The Dark Night and are asked targeted comprehension questions that require comparing two characters (e.g., "What do Tom and Val see in the sky?" and "What do Tom and Val dream about?"). The activities prompt students to identify what each character experiences (moon, stars, bats; Tom dreams of pie, Val dreams of mice). A life-application prompt asks students to explain what they know about long i spellings to a family member, giving an additional opportunity to practice explaining connections in information.
Lesson 10
Other Long Vowel Patterns
Students read The Wild Colt (Activity 5.1) and are asked specific comprehension questions that require connecting details in the text: "Why is the colt hard to find in the herd?" (connects characteristics of the colts to the event of finding the colt) and "How does the man stop the colt from bolting?" (connects the man's action to the colt's change in behavior). Students also practice orally answering and discussing these questions after reading the story aloud.
Lesson 13
Other Vowel Sounds ou, ow
Students read The Hound and the Owl and are asked targeted comprehension questions that require connecting elements of the story (e.g., "What does the hound do during the day?"; "What does the hound do at night?"; "Why do you think the hound howls at the owl?"). Students are also asked to point to words in the Weekly Message and to explain spelling rules, which asks them to connect two ideas (spelling patterns and sound). Several activities prompt students to sort and explain groups (e.g., sorting words and explaining why words are grouped), which requires describing relationships between pieces of information.
Lesson 15
These Make More Than One Sound: oo and ea
Students read The Bad Bear and answer comprehension questions that require linking events (e.g., "What are some of the naughty things the bear does?" and "What happens when the bear's mom finds her?"). During Activity 5.1 students identify actions (playing in the pool, taking books, eating bread) and the consequence (the mom makes the bear clean up the mess), which asks them to describe a connection between events. Other activities ask students to reread and respond to targeted questions about the story's events.