The Giant Cookie - Predicting What the Story Is About

Lesson Plan - Get It!

Audio:

Today, you will begin reading a story titled, The Giant Cookie, by Clark Ness.

Before you begin, let's talk about something you should do before you read ANY story. It's called predicting.

Predicting is a fancy word for guessing. Predicting is fun to do and it helps you want to read the story to the end, to see if you were right! That is called confirming.

When you go to make a prediction about a story, you have a couple clues you can use to help you:

• The first one is the title, or name, of the book. The author gives the book its title and writes the story. Can you think of another word for author?
• The other clue is the illustration on the front of the book. This is the picture or pictures you see on the front of the book. A person called the illustrator is the one who makes the pictures for the book's cover. Can you think of another word for illustrator?

Take a moment to practice your prediction skills:

1. Print the Predicting Worksheet from Downloadable Resources in the right-hand sidebar.
2. On the worksheet are three pictures. Next to each picture is a space for you to draw what you think will happen next.
3. After drawing your picture, write your prediction on the lines after the pictures.

Now that we know what predicting is and where to get the clues to help us make our prediction, take a look at the cover of your book.

1. Take your time and look at the illustration.
2. Read the title and think about what it could mean.
3. When you think you know what the story might be about, tell your teacher.
4. He or she can help you write your prediction somewhere (on a sheet of paper or the board) so you will remember what your guess was.
5. You can even draw a picture of how you think the story will end!

The book in this lesson is a chapter book. A chapter book is a story that is broken into several chapters, or parts. Sometimes, the author will do this if a story is a long one. By putting the story into chapters, authors make it easier for readers to understand and remember the story.

Don't expect to finish reading the story today. After you read each chapter, check back with your prediction to see if you guessed correctly!

Once you have finished reading the story, check back for the last time with your prediction. How did you do? Did you guess correctly?

Draw a picture of the actual end of the story and post it somewhere in your learning space next to your prediction picture. Discuss with your parent or teacher about how you would change the end of the story to match your prediction.

When you are done, move on to the Got It? section to perform a scientific experiment!