Text Type: Fiction/Informational Narrative
Page Count: 20
Word Count: 1,441

Book Summary
Emmanuel and Victor never expected to find such archeological wonders in France. Come with them as they discover Font de Gaume, a cave with Paleolithic paintings, and Prehisto Parc, filled with life-sized scenes of these ancient peoples. The boys and their parents experience firsthand what life was like for early humans, and you will, too!

About the Lesson

Targeted Reading Strategy

• Summarize

Objectives

• Use the reading strategy of summarizing to understand text
• Identify main idea and details
• Identify compound predicates in sentences
• Arrange words in alphabetical order to the third letter

Materials

• Book -- A Trip to a Prehistoric Cave (copy for each student)
• Chalkboard or dry erase board
• Dictionaries
• Main idea and details/summary, compound predicate, alphabetical order worksheets
• Discussion cards

      Indicates an opportunity for students to mark in the book. (All activities may be demonstrated by projecting book on interactive whiteboard or completed with paper and pencil if books are reused.)

Vocabulary

• Content words: archaeologists, engraved, enhance, Homo sapiens, illuminate, lured, outcroppings, Paleolithic, polychromatic, unison

Build Background

• Share a picture of a cave or a cave opening. Ask students to identify what it is and where they think it might be.
• Explain to students that many places in the world have caves, not just North America, and many of them have paintings and artifacts that help us learn what life was like for humans thousands of years ago.
• Locate France on a map and its capital, Paris. Tell students they will be reading a book about two fascinating locations in France.

Preview the Book

Introduce the Book

• Give students their copy of the book. Guide them to the front and back covers and read the title. Have students discuss what they see on the covers. Encourage them to offer ideas as to what type of book it is (genre, text type, fiction or nonfiction, and so on) and what it might be about.
• Show students the title page. Discuss the information on the page (title of book, author's name, illustrator's name).
• Preview the table of contents on page 3. Remind students that the table of contents provides an overview of what the book is about. Ask students what they expect to read about in the book based on what they see in the table of contents. (Accept any answers students can justify.)

Introduce the Comprehension Skill: Main idea and details

• Ask students to skim through the text, noticing where the subtitles, or sections, begin. Explain to students that when a book or text is large, the author groups the information into smaller sections. Each section has its own main idea. Details in the section support that main idea.
• Explain to students that the structure of this book is somewhat unique, in that it is an informational text, but the facts are told within a narrative about a family on vacation in France. So, to identify the main idea and details, the reader must determine what is essential (facts about the places they are visiting) and nonessential (the dialogue between characters, the details of their travel and family, and so on.)
• Remind or explain to students that the section headings often give clues to the main ideas. Model how to identify the main idea by using the table of contents:
  Think-aloud: I know that a section heading sometimes identifies the main idea. Each section contains details that support a main idea about these prehistoric sites. For example, the section titled "A Tour of Font de Gaume" is likely to be about what it's like to visit this place. When I read that section, I will probably find out many details that tell about going on a tour there.
• Distribute the main idea and details/summary worksheet to students. Say: I can use a chart like the one on this worksheet to help me keep track of the main idea and details of each section of this book. I will use the section heading as a strong clue as to what the main idea will be for that section.

Introduce the Reading Strategy: Summarize

• Explain to students that one way to understand and remember information in a book is to write a summary, or a brief overview of the most important information in the text. Point out that a summary includes the main idea and one or two supporting details. It often answers the questions who, what, when, where, and why.
• Model how to summarize text using the main idea and details.
  Think-aloud: To summarize, I decide which information is most important to the meaning of the section that is necessary to remember. To do this, I can identify the main idea and important details, and then organize that information into a few sentences. I can use my worksheet to help me write this summary.
• Tell students that they will be stopping after each section, identifying the main idea and important details, and then organizing the important information into a few sentences to create a summary.
• As students read, encourage them to use other reading strategies in addition to the targeted strategy presented in this section. For tips on additional reading strategies, click here.

Introduce the Vocabulary

• As students preview the book, ask them to talk about what they see in the photographs. Reinforce the vocabulary words they will encounter in the text.
• Explain to students that sometimes there are strong context clues in the text to help the reader define an unfamiliar word (point out the word polychromatic on page 7 and show students how the definition follows the word in the text). However, sometimes there won't be any context clues that define an unfamiliar word. Model how students can use the glossary or a dictionary to locate a word's meaning. Have a volunteer read the definition for unison in the glossary. Have students follow along on page 6 as you read the sentence in which the word unison is found to confirm the meaning of the word.
• Write the word unison on the board. Have volunteers to give examples of things that happen in unison.
• Have students locate each of the remaining content vocabulary words in the glossary. Read and discuss their definitions as a class.
• For tips on teaching word-attack strategies, click here.

Set the Purpose

• Have students read to find out more about Font de Gaume and Prehisto Parc. Remind them to stop after each section to identify the main idea and details.

Student Reading

• Guide the reading: Have students read to the end of page 7. Encourage those who finish before others to reread the text and to think about the important information presented on these pages.
• Model identifying the main idea and details of these two pages.
  Think-aloud: As I read the section titled "A Tour of Font de Gaume," I noticed there is a lot of nonessential information about the boys waiting to get in the gates, the tour guide locking up their backpacks, and so on. But I want to identify the main idea and only the most essential details. I will underline the sentences The cave was dry, which meant no new stalactites or stalagmites were forming and They also didn't see any bats flying around. This tells me what type of cave it is. Then I will also underline They saw five bison painted in several colors... On page 7, the first paragraph contains many important details that I will underline, for example ...one of the six most important caves in the world from the upper Paleolithic period, ...painted around 14,000 BC, and ...paintings are polychromatic. Based on what I've read, I think the main idea of this section is: Font de Gaume is an important cave from the Paleolithic period because of the polychromatic paintings on the walls.
• Write the main idea on a copy of the main idea and details/summary worksheet and project it on the board. Ask students to identify details that support this main idea (scientists think they were painted around 14,000 BC by Homo sapiens, unique paintings made up of many different colors, and so on). Write these details on the worksheet for students to see.
• Point out to students that the main idea was not found at the beginning of the section, but rather in the middle. Remind them to read and think carefully about the main idea of a section.
• Model how to create a summary from the main idea and details. Say: Now that I have identified the main idea and details, I can write a summary, in my own words, for this section. I think a summary of this section might be: Font de Gaume is an important dry cave in France that has many polychromatic paintings of bison and reindeer on the walls. These paintings were created around 14,000 BC, by early Homo sapiens. They are unique because of the use of many colors.

      Check for understanding: Have students read to the end of page 11. Have them underline or highlight important details. Remind students that the important facts are mixed in with the narrative portion of the story, and while the narrative makes the story enjoyable, they should consider it nonessential to the information.

• Have students transfer the phrases they underlined or highlighted to their main idea and detail/summary worksheet. Monitor their worksheets for essential vs. nonessential details. Ask volunteers to share what they identified as the main idea (Ancient painters used the surfaces of the cave walls and the firelight to give life to their paintings).
• Divide students into four groups. Assign each group to one of the sections, "The People," "Their Homes," "Their Food," and "Their Art." Have them identify and underline important details in their section. Have students work with their group to identify the main idea from these details. Discuss their responses as a class and write a main idea for each section on the board.
• Have students read the remainder of the book. Discuss whether the "Conclusion" shuld be considered essential or nonessential information.

      Have students make a question mark in their book beside any word they do not understand or cannot pronounce. Encourage them to use the strategies they have learned to read each word and figure out its meaning.

• Ask students what words, if any, they marked in their book. Use this opportunity to model how they can read these words using decoding strategies and context clues.

Reflect on the Comprehension Skill

• Discussion: Discuss how stopping to review the important details helped students remember the facts and better understand the information in the book. Determining which details are essential and nonessential is an important skill that takes practice.
• Independent practice: Have each student return to the text and find one example of a nonessential detail. Have them read it aloud and then tell why it is nonessential.

Reflect on the Reading Strategy

• Review with students how the main idea and details from each section can be used to develop a summary. Discuss with them the benefits of summarizing information they read (to understand the main point of a larger piece of writing). Invite students to share instances of when summarizing might be helpful.
• Independent practice: Have students review their completed main idea/summary worksheet. On the back of the worksheet, challenge them to write a summary about Paleolithic peoples using the information from all of the groups that was collected on the board.
• Enduring understanding: In this book, you learned about a group of ancient people and the works of art they left behind. What do you think modern-day paintings will tell future generations about us?

Grammar and Mechanics: Compound predicates

• Write the following sentence on the board: They were learning about caves in school. Explain that every sentence has two parts. One part is called the subject. It tells the person, place, or thing the sentence is about. The other part is called the predicate. The predicate tells the action of the subject. It is the part of the sentence that contains the verb. Ask students to identify the subject (They). Circle the word. Ask students to tell the action of the subject (were learning about caves in school). Explain that the entire phrase is the predicate. Underline the predicate.
• Tell students that sometimes the predicate can have more than one part to it. Add to the sentence on the board so that it now reads: They were learning about caves in school and wanted to see some bats, too.
• Explain that this is an example of a compound predicate because it contains two verbs (learning and wanted) and the actions are joined by the word and or another conjunction. Compound predicates share the same subject. Circle the conjunction and in the sentence. Then ask a volunteer to identify the second part of the predicate (wanted to see some bats, too).

      Check for understanding: Provide students with two colors of highlighters or pencils. Ask them to turn to page 5 and read the first sentence. Have students circle the subject (Victor, Emmanuel, and their mom and dad). Next, ask them to highlight or underline in one color the first part of the compound predicate (signed up for a tour). Then have them circle the conjunction (and) and highlight or underline in the second color the second part of the compound predicate (walked up some steps to the mouth of the cave). Monitor for accuracy.

• Independent practice: Introduce, explain, and have students complete the compound predicate worksheet. Discuss answers aloud after students finish.

Word Work: Alphabetical order

• Review or explain the process of putting a list of words in alphabetical order. Remind students that if the first letter of two words is the same, they must compare the next two letters instead. They may even have to look at the third letter.
• Write the words cave and archaeologist on the board. Have a volunteer explain which word would appear first in alphabetical order (archaeologist) and why (because a comes before c in the alphabet).
• Write the words bison and bat on the board. Point out that the words begin with the same letter (b). Ask a volunteer to tell which word would appear first in alphabetical order and to explain his or her thinking (bat, because the second letter, a, in bat comes before the second letter, i, in bison).
• Write the words bat and backpack on the board. Repeat the process, showing students how to compare the two words up to the third letter.
• Check for understanding: Write the words entrance and engraved on the board. Have students write the words in alphabetical order and explain their thinking on a separate piece of paper or individual whiteboards.
• Independent practice: Introduce, explain, and have students complete the alphabetical order worksheet. Discuss answers aloud after they are finished.

Independent Reading

• Allow students to read their book independently. Additionally, allow partners to take turns reading parts of the book to each other.

Home Connection

• Give students their book to take home to read with parents, caregivers, siblings, or friends. Have students summarize what they learned about ancient cave painters as they read a book about two boys on vacation.

Informational Narrative Writing Connection
Have students think about a place they have visited or know well. Have students research the place to find out two interesting facts to include in their story. Then, have them write a narrative story that presents the factual information about the place in which they are writing. The intent of the story is to inform the reader about the facts of the place each student decides to write about. Allow students to share their stories with the class and have the class determine the factual information.

Social Studies Connection
Supply books and links to Internet websites for students to learn more about spelunking-- cave exploring. Have them find out if there are any caves in their area that they might visit. Ask them to determine if there is any evidence of early human culture in or near the cave.

Skill Review
Discussion cards covering comprehension skills and strategies not explicitly taught with the book are provided as an extension activity. The following is a list of some ways these cards can be used with students:

• Use as discussion starters for literature circles.
• Have students choose one or more cards and write a response, either as an essay or a journal entry.
• Distribute before reading the book and have students use one of the questions as a purpose for reading.
• Cut apart and use the cards as game cards with a board game.
• Conduct a class discussion as a review before the book quiz.