Deserts
Level I/15
Social Studies Teacher’s Guide
Skills & Strategies
Anchor Comprehension
Strategies
•• Draw Conclusions
•• Summarize Information
Phonemic Awareness
•• Manipulating medial sounds
Phonics
•• Variant vowel oo
•• Word family -old
High-Frequency Words
•• enough, most, much
Content Vocabulary
•• Desert words
Grammar/Word Study
•• Words that tell how much or how many
Social Studies Big Idea
•• Deserts have a complete ecosystem that
includes plants and animals.
• Small Group Reading Lesson
• Skills Bank
• Reproducible Activities
B
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C
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Small Group Reading Lesson
K-W-L
Topic: Learning about deserts
K
W
L
(What I know (What I want to
(What I learned)
or think I know)
know)
Deserts are
hot.
Where are
deserts?
Deserts have What kinds
lots of sand. of animals
Camels live live in the
in the desert. desert?
All deserts
are dry.
Some deserts are hot.
Some are
cold.
Animals and
plants have
special ways
of surviving
It doesn’t
in the desert.
rain much in How are deserts
formed?
the desert.
A cactus
grows in the
desert.
What kinds
of plants
grow in the
desert?
Before Reading
Activate Prior Knowledge
Encourage students to draw on prior knowledge and build
background for reading the text. Create an overhead transparency
of the graphic organizer “K-W-L” (left) or copy the organizer on
chart paper, leaving the columns blank. Find out what students
already know about deserts. Record their responses in the “K”
column of the chart. Ask students to think about what they would
like to learn about deserts from reading the book. Write their
responses in the “W” column. Inform students that they will come
back to the graphic organizer when they have finished reading the
book.
Preview the Book
Read the title and names of the authors to students. Ask:
Visual Cues
• Look for familiar vowel
patterns. (CVCe pattern in
shade and hole)
• Look for familiar chunks
within the word. (with in
without; goose in
mongoose)
• Break the word into syllables
and sound out each part.
(an/i/mal; Sa/ha/ra)
Structure Cues
• Think about whether the
sentence sounds right.
• Look for repeated language
patterns. (“Some animals...”)
Meaning Cues
• Think about what makes
sense in the sentence.
• Look at the pictures to
confirm the meaning of
the word.
• What do you see on the cover?
• How can you tell it is a desert?
Show students the title page. Ask:
• What does the table of contents tell us about the information in
the book?
• What page would you turn to if you wanted to find out if animals live
in the desert?
Preview the photographs and graphic features with students,
reinforcing the language used in the text. For example, say: Look at
the map of the world on pages 2 and 3. The map shows where the
deserts are. Can you tell from the map where the largest desert is?
(Northern Africa) Do you think all these deserts look alike?
Set a Purpose for Reading
Have students turn to page 2 and read the book silently. Say: I want
you to find out about deserts and the plants and animals that live there.
Let’s see if we can find information to add to our K-W-L chart. Monitor
students’ reading and provide support when necessary.
Review Reading Strategies
Use the cues provided to remind students that they can apply
different strategies to identify unfamiliar words.
Deserts
2
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During Reading
Observe and Prompt Reading Strategies
Observe students as they read the book. Take note of how they are
problem-solving on text. Guide, or prompt, individual students
who cannot problem-solve independently.
After Reading
Reflect on Reading Strategies
After students have completed their reading, encourage them to
share the reading strategies they used. Reinforce the good reading
behaviors you noticed by saying:
• I noticed, [student’s name], that when you came to a word you didn’t
know, you went back and reread the sentence. Did this help you figure
out the word?
• [Student’s name], I saw you try to sound out the word cactus. You
divided the word into syllables and used what you know about short
vowels to sound out each syllable. Then you looked at the picture to
check if you were right. That’s what good readers do.
Build Comprehension
Ask and Answer Questions
Help students review the text content and relate it to what they
already know by asking some or all of the following questions.
• What does the book tell us about how plants survive in the desert?
Let’s write what we learned in the “L” column of our chart. (Cactus
plants keep water in their stems, p. 14; the baobab tree sends
roots deep into the ground to find water, p. 15) (Locate facts)
• Let’s look at our K-W-L chart. Were any of our questions answered?
(Answers will reflect information throughout the book. Students
should find evidence for their answers in the text.) (Compare
and contrast)
• What kinds of challenges would you face if you lived in the desert?
Use your own ideas and what you learned from the book. (Answers
will vary. One possible answer: It would be hard to find food and
water.) (Make inferences)
• Does the addax live in a hot desert or a cold desert? (hot, pp. 11
and 6) (Draw conclusions)
• Would you like to visit a desert? Would you like to live in one? Why
or why not? (Answers will vary.) (Use creative thinking)
© 2011 Benchmark Education Company, LLC
Teacher Tip
Using the Skills Bank
Based on your observations
of students’ reading
behaviors, you may wish to
select activities from the
Skills Bank (pp. 6–8) that will
develop students’ reading
strategies.
Question Types
Students need to understand
that they can use information
from various places in the
book, as well as background
knowledge, to answer different
types of questions. These
lessons provide four types of
ques­­tions, designed to give
students practice in
understanding the relationship
between a question and the
source of its answer.
• Questions that require
students to go to a specific
place in the book.
• Questions that require
students to integrate
information from several
sentences, paragraphs, or
chapters within the book.
• Questions that require
students to combine
background knowledge with
information from the book.
• Questions that relate to the
book topic but require
students to use only
background knowledge and
experience, not information
from the book.
Deserts
3
Small Group Reading Lesson
(continued)
Build Comprehension
Summarize Information
Teacher Tip
Monitoring
Comprehension
• Are students able to revisit
the text to locate specific
answers to text-dependent
questions? If they are
having difficulty, show
them how to match the
wording of the question to
the wording in the text to
help them locate answers.
• Are students able to find
answers to questions that
require a search of the
text? If they are having
difficulty, model how you
would search for the
answer.
Model Create an overhead transparency of the graphic organizer on
page 1 or copy it on the board. Review the information in the book.
Begin with a discussion of the types of deserts. Then discuss
characteristics of hot and cold deserts. Model for students how to
record this information on the chart. Use the following think-aloud.
When I read nonfiction material, I can better remember what I have
read if I organize the information on a chart. On this chart I can
summarize the details about hot and cold deserts, and the plants and
animals that live in each. When I summarize I write only the most
important words from the text. The book tells me that the Sahara
Desert is a hot desert. I will write this detail here. Now let’s summarize
the rest of the information together.
Practice and Apply Help students locate details about hot and cold
deserts in the book. Model how to record the information from the
book on the graphic organizer. When students can complete the
organizer independently, distribute copies and monitor their work.
Allow time for students to share their recorded information.
• Can students combine
their background
knowledge with
information from the text
to draw conclusions? If
they are having difficulty,
model how you would
answer the question.
• Are students’ answers to
creative questions logical
and relevant to the topic?
• Do students’ completed
graphic organizers reflect
an ability to summarize
information? If students
are having difficulty,
provide more modeling.
Summarize Information
Topic:
Deserts
Hot
Cold
Sahara Desert
Gobi Desert
Animals
Plants
Animals
camel
addax
hedgehog
cactus
camel
mongoose
Plants
Deserts
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© 2011 Benchmark Education Company, LLC
Small Group Writing
Use the information from the graphic organizer completed during
the Build Comprehension segment of the lesson to help students
write a summary paragraph describing one of the types of deserts.
Use the following writing steps.
• Use the information on the graphic organizer to help students
summarize aloud the information about one type of desert.
• Guide them in creating sentences, using the information on the
chart, that you record on the board.
• Read through the sentences with students. Ask for suggestions
about ways the sentences can be improved. Ask: Does the order
of the sentences make sense? Do we need to add details to make the
description clearer?
• Discuss how the photographs in the book provide readers with
a better understanding of the content. Have students suggest a
visual feature to include with their paragraph.
Write Independently
Remind students of the importance of carefully planning their
writing. Explain that students are going to use the same graphic
organizer to plan their own descriptive paragraph. Use the
following writing steps.
• Distribute copies of the blank graphic organizer.
Reread for Fluency
You may wish to read
sections of the book aloud
to students to model
fluent reading of the text.
Model using appropriate
phrasing, intonation,
expression, volume, and
rate as you read. Some
students may benefit from
listening to you read a
portion of the text and
then reading it back
to you.
Have students reread
Deserts with a partner.
Have one partner read a
page and ask the partner
a question about it. Stu­
dents should take turns
reading a page and asking
the questions.
• Ask students to choose a topic, such as mountains, oceans,
or their house.
• Help students label the circles on the organizer. For example,
students writing about their house might label the first-tier box
“My House,” the second-tier boxes “Upstairs” and
“Downstairs,” and so on.
• Have students write details in the appropriate boxes.
• Ask students to expand on the details and create sentences
about their topics for their written paragraphs.
• Tell students that they can work with a partner to edit their
paragraphs.
Connect to Home
Have students read the
take-home version of
Deserts to family members.
Encourage students to
share their descriptive
paragraphs with family
members.
Deserts
© 2011 Benchmark Education Company, LLC
5
Skills Bank
Phonemic Awareness: Manipulating medial sounds
Say the word root. Ask students what vowel sound they hear in the
middle. (/oo /) Ask them what word you would have if you changed
the vowel sound to / i /. (right) Now ask them what word you
would have if you changed the / i / to /a/. (rat)
Tell students that you want to change the middle sound in the
word live. Ask them what word you would have if you changed the
/i/ sound in live to /e / (leave). Continue manipulating sounds to
create new words: leave to love; look to like; food to fed; drop to
drip; rain to run; hot to hit, hat, and hut.
Phonics: Variant vowel oo
c oo l
l oo k
f oo d
g oo d
fold
mold
gold
sold
hold
told
Write the words cool and food on the board and have a volunteer
read them aloud. Ask students what sounds the same in the two
words. (The words have the same vowel sound.) Circle the letters
oo in each word. Then write the words look and good on the board.
Have another volunteer read these words. Ask students what
sounds the same in these two words. (The words also have the
same vowel sound.) Circle the letters oo in look and good. Explain
to students that the letters oo can make both the /oo / sound, as in
food, and the /u^/ sound, as in good.
Phonics: Word family -old
Write the word cold on the board. Read the word with students.
Erase the c in cold and write b in its place. Ask students to read the
new word. (bold) Write ___old on the board six times. Ask students
to give you other examples of -old words and tell you what letter to
write in the blank to make the word. If they are having difficulty,
guide students to identify fold, gold, hold, mold, sold, and told.
Deserts
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© 2011 Benchmark Education Company, LLC
High-Frequency Word Vocabulary
Write the words most, enough, and much on the board. Ask
students to copy the words onto index cards. Say sentences using
the words, but leave out the high-frequency word. For example,
say: I like strawberries very ____ or _____ deserts are very hot. Ask
students to hold up the card with the word on it that completes
the sentence.
Content Vocabulary: Desert words
Ask students to brainstorm words associated with the desert,
such as dry, hot, cold, rocks, sand, palm trees, cactus, lizards,
snakes, and camel. List their suggestions on the board. Draw two
overlapping circles on the board to create a Venn diagram. Label
one circle “Hot deserts” and the other “Cold deserts.” Go through
the list one word at a time and ask students whether the word
goes with hot deserts, cold deserts, or both. Write the words in
the appropriate place on the Venn diagram.
most
enough
much
Grammar/Word Study: Words that tell
how much or how many
Ask students to brainstorm a list of words or phrases that tell
how much or how many, such as some, much, enough, very, little,
more, and a lot. Have students search the book to see how these
words are used. Then ask them to choose several words and write
sentences of their own.
Copyright © 2011 Benchmark Education Company, LLC. All rights reserved. Teachers may photocopy the reproducible pages for classroom use. No other part of the guide may be reproduced or transmitted in
whole or in part in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN# 978-1-4108-0132-6
7
Skills Bank
Build Comprehension
Draw Conclusions
••Explain Create an overhead transparency of the graphic organizer
“Deserts” or draw it on the board. Say: An author can’t give us
every bit of information in a book. We figure out some things on our
own. We use the author’s words, photographs, and information we
already know for clues. Figuring something out using three or more
clues is called drawing a conclusion.
••Model Say: Let’s draw a conclusion about Deserts. On pages 2 and
3, we see a world map showing where deserts are found. There are
medium size deserts in North and South America. There are very
large deserts in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia. I know
that North and South America are in the Western Hemisphere.
Record this evidence in the first Clues box on the graphic
organizer. Say: Now we need to use the clues to draw a conclusion.
We can conclude that deserts cover a larger area of land in the
Eastern Hemisphere than in the Western Hemisphere. Write this in
the first Conclusion box.
••Guide Say: Now let’s draw a conclusion about water in deserts.
Look at pages 4 through 6. What do we learn about deserts on these
pages? (Allow time for students to respond, assisting if needed.)
Yes, we learn that all deserts are dry. Some deserts go years without
rain. Most deserts are very hot. We also know that hot weather
makes bodies of water evaporate and dry up. Record this evidence
in the second Clues box on the graphic organizer. Ask: What can
we figure out from these clues? (Again allow time for students to
respond.) Yes, deserts do not have large bodies of water like lakes or
rivers. Record this sentence in the second Conclusion box on the
graphic organizer.
••Apply Ask students to work with a partner to draw several
more conclusions from the book. Remind them to use word and
photograph clues, as well as information they already know, to
figure out things the author doesn’t say. After the partnerships
share, record their ideas on the graphic organizer. Finally, invite
volunteers to read the completed graphic organizer aloud.
8
Deserts
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Name _______________________________________________________ Date __________________
Deserts
Draw Conclusions
Clues
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Conclusion
Notes
10
Deserts
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Notes
Deserts
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Name _______________________________________________________ Date ___________________
Summarize Information
Topic:
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