Scaredy Squirrel Has a Birthday Party, Guided Reading Plan

Standard(s):
​NJSLSA.R10. Read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently
and proficiently with scaffolding as needed.

L.3.6. Acquire and use accurately grade-appropriate conversational, general academic, and
domain-specific words and phrases, including those that signal spatial and temporal
relationships (e.g., ​After dinner that night we went looking for them​).

Objective:​ ​Students will read and discuss narrative text and engage in discussion of key
concepts and vocabulary through the development of ​graphic organizers ​and ​writing projects t​ o
demonstrate comprehension at a level of (3) proficiency based on a 4 point rubric scale.

I. PreReading - Prepare students for reading a book​:

A. Activate/Build Prior Knowledge
Develop the discussion relating to birthday parties and encourage your students
to share stories of birthday parties that were thrown for them or that they went to
growing up. Talk with your students about what a birthday party is and what goes into
having a birthday party. Talk with your students about things that scare them and what
could happen at a birthday party that could cause them to be scared. Things that could
make them scared, could be lighting the birthday candles, getting dizzy while trying to
hit the pinata, or even balloons popping. Have your students predict what kinds of
things Scaredy Squirrel is afraid of and discuss with your students about how Scaredy
Squirrel is afraid of things that you would not normally be afraid of, at a birthday party.
Use this conversation to have your student’s prior knowledge connect with what
Scaredy Squirrel is going through while trying to plan a birthday party for himself.

B. Preview the text and make predictions

By taking a picture walk through the book with your students, they will get a
sneak peek of what the story is going to be about and are able to infer what the story is
going to be about. Have the students start with the front cover and the back cover. Then
you enter the story and “guide” the students through each picture and make predictions
on what is going to happen to Scaredy Squirrel. It is important with this story to not go
too far into the story because then the ending will be revealed and you want your
students to be able to find out the ending when reading the story.

C. Teach Vocabulary
After the picture walk through the story, pull some of the complex vocabulary
that the students may be unfamiliar with. Write those words on the board and start a
discussion about the words. Ask them to infer the words' meaning, and explain the
definitions before reading the story. Words to go over include: Celebration, Sincerely,
Surprise, Certificate and Spoil.
 D. Set a Purpose to Begin Reading
Ask your students to start reading their story and make sure each student knows
that Scaredy Squirrel will go through lots of measures to make sure that his party is safe.
The purpose for reading this story would be to see whether Scaredy Squirrel will
overcome his fears and to see what happens at his birthday party.

II. Read the Text​ – ​Students in the role of reader actively read the text with guidance &
support.
Students are going to be in small groups, reading silently to themselves while
they are searching for the purpose for reading. I would act as a monitor of their reading,
I would walk around the classroom observing and looking for any difficulty with fluency
and understanding the content. It is important to observe your students and make sure
if there are any problems with reading and fluency that you can help resolve those
problems during this time. As they are reading the story, create a text connections chart
and have your students fill out this chart to show different text connections, text-text,
text-world, text-self. After they finish reading, they can go on to finish filling out the
chart and then wait for their classmates to finish reading,

III. Responding to Text

A. Discuss the Purpose Setting Question​ Posed Before Beginning the Reading
After the story has been read, it would be time to have a discussion about the
question that was posed before reading the story or the purpose of reading the story.
While reading the story, it is important to stop along the way to see how well your
students are comprehending and understanding the text that is being read. Questions
that could be asked are: What is Scaredy planning on doing at his party?, Why do you
think Scaredy does not want anyone at his party? and What is Scaredy afraid of?
B. Clarify Concepts​ and/or Vocabulary (QARs)
It is important as you are reading the story and after you are done reading the
story to gauge what your students still have questions about, in dealing with the story or
what new questions they have that are spurred from reading the story. It is also a good
opportunity to go over those new vocab words with them and locate them inthe story.
THe students could use context clues to put the words meaning in their own words.
C. Supporting Comprehension​ using a ​Graphic Organizer
I feel that it is important for students to be able to visualize what is happening in
a story, rather than just listening to it. This is a good time for students to be able to
write or draw how the story goes. They could create a timeline, write journal entries
from the point of view of one of the characters, or even create their own birthday
invitation or birthday plan just like Scaredy.
D.​ ​Make Connections​ to self, other texts and the world
For establishing text-self connections, encourage self reflection and sharing of
different experiences regarding fears, birthdays, aspects of planning, etc. This will make
 sure that the students are looking introspectively at their own lifes and are making
connections between Scaredy and themselves. For establishing text-world connections,
you could create a group discussion about things going on in the world that could cause
fear or you could have the students share what they know about different cultures and
how they celebrate different events. If the students do not know how different cultures
celebrate birthdays, this would be a great time for cultural diversity and introducing
different cultures to your students. For establishing text-text connections, as a teacher
you could have a selection of other books that deal with overcoming fears, celebrations,
or other scary things. The students could then read books that are similar to this one, if
they want to connect the two texts.
E.​ ​Support Further Discussion​ of Concepts in the Reading
While reading the story, stop periodically when Scaredy Squirrel creates another
part of his plan or when he goes through different steps while planning his party. Talk
about what he is doing and why he is doing it. Ask them to predict what they think is
going to happen next, based off of context clues and what he is planning.

IV. Exploring – Review the book to further support students with a literacy strategy and
require them to reread to build fluency.
A good literacy skill to use would be to create a venn diagram to compare
themselves to Scaredy Squirrel. First, I would have the children re-read the story and
then I would use purposeful partnering to pair my students together and then as a pair
they would look at the character traits of Scaredy Squirrel and themselves and compare
and contrast. Then I would have them complete an assignment individually, where they
could pick how they wanted to present/showcase how similar and different they were
to Scaredy Squirrel.

V. Apply –

The students could use an activity to learn about different phobias. Your
students can use technology or books in researching a specific phobia. Then the
students could choose what way they want to show their phobia. It could be a
pamphlet, a video, a powerpoint, a cartoon, whatever kind of tool they want to produce
to educate others on phobias and what kinds of phobias are out there. The students
could present their research at a science fair, an open house or create a class book on
phobias.