Guided Reading Lesson Plan: Henry and Mudge and the Long Weekend

About the Book:

Title: Henry and Mudge and the Long Weekend by Cynthia Rylant
Text Type: Fiction
Page Count: 40 (17 read during this lesson.)
Reading Level: J
Book Summary: On a rainy, cold weekend, Henry and his dog Mudge have nothing to do. Very bored, they try to think of something fun to do. Henry's mother gets an idea; they'll all build a castle. They have so much fun building the castle that they don't mind that it's raining out.

About the Lesson:

Standards:
-E2b-Produce a response to literature
-E3A-Participate in one to one conferences with teacher
-E5a-Respond to fiction using interpretive and critical processes.
Estimated Lesson Time: 20-25 minutes
Main Targeted Reading Strategy: Reading words that end in -ing and -ed.
Objectives: Students will be able to read book with fluency and comprehension, and will learn how to tackle bigger words by separating the base word from the suffix.
Materials: Book
Vocabulary: Drooled, grumbled, turrets, drawbridge, buttresses.

Before Reading:

Build Background: Give children a short idea about what this book is about. Tell them we will be reading the first three chapters today. Ask children to turn to the contents page, and have a student read the name of the first chapter. Ask if anyone can guess what is meant by "Wet Yuck", the title of the first chapter. Do the same for the titles of the other two chapters, "Bored" and "The Idea." Ask children to make a prediction about what might happen in the story.
Introduce the Book: Ask children, "Have you ever had a boring day where you just couldn't think of anything to do?"
Introduce the Reading Strategy: Ask students what it means when -ed is added to the end of a word. How about -ing?Tell students these are called suffixes. They are added to the end of a word to add more meaning.
Set the Purpose: Tell students that this book has lots of examples of words that end in -ed and -ing. Learning to identify and read the base word in these words, and then add on the -ed or -ing, will make reading bigger and more complicated words easier.

During Reading:

Student Reading: One by one each student will come up to the teacher and read 2 pages. The other students will be reading silently. Watch students as they are reading silently. Watch for attention to reading. During one-on-one reading, observe how student handles unfamiliar words. Observe tone and inflections while reading, and whether or not student stops and pauses in relation to the punctuation.
Guide the Reading: Tell students, "Reading a word with a suffix at the end can be a lot easier if we separate the base word from the suffix." Show students how to do so with the example word, "looked." Draw a line between "look" and "ed." Ask a student to read "look." Now ask them to add on the -ed. While reading, if any student has difficulty with any -ed or -ing words have them stop and identify the base words first, then read the suffix, and laslty, read the full word.
Key Questions: "The title is called Henry and Mudge and the Long Weekend. What do you think is meant by saying the weekend was long?" "What made it feel long to Henry and Mudge?" "What do you think will happen when we read the rest of the story next time?"

After Reading:

Reflect on the Reading Strategy: Ask students if they feel that separating the base word from its suffix helped them in their reading.
Assessment: Ask each student to tell you, in a few short sentences, what the story was about. If there is time, have them draw a picture of their favorite part of the book so far.
Next Steps: Next time this guided reading group meets, read the last 2 chapters of the book.