Conduct a picture view of the story. Ask students to predict what the story is about.

Explain that Emily is writing to her teacher, Mr. Blueberry, and he writes letters back to Emily.

Use syntax and context to support word id and confirm word meaning

Reinforce using vocabulary to describe clear ideas, thoughts, meaning

Teach/Model and Practice/Apply - Remind children the words that come before and after an unfamiliar word can often help them figure out its meaning.

Write sentenences on the board. Ask children to circle clues in the sentence that can help them figure out the meaning of a specific word.

Think About it, Retell and Summarize

Reinforce listening for a purpose

Interpret and use graphic sources of information such as maps, charts, graphs, and diagrams

Reinforce retelling or acting out important events of the story

Draw and discuss visual images based on text

Comprehension -- Asking frequent questions to the students about the story. If children have difficulty answering the questions, readers may need clues in the story to connect with what they already know to figure out what the story doesn't tell.

Genre - Teacher will remind children they have read several fantasy stories. Ask leading questions to make the students discover what could happen in real life and which events could not happen.

Cross-curricular Connections: Science, Math, Social Studies,

Science: Fish or Mammal?

Compare rivers to oceans, migration, kinds of whales

SS/Health: Salt

Art: Details in pictures

Math: Measuring different whales

Connect ideas and themes across texts

Demonstrate understanding of informational text in various ways such as through writing, illustrating, developing demonstrations, and using available technology

Interpret and use graphic sources of information such as maps, charts, graphs, and diagrams

Identify concrete models that approximate standard units of length, capacity, and weight

The discovery of whales and their characteristics will be new learning

A salt water expierement to discover how and why the oceans have salt in them.

Discuss the uses of salt with children.

Parts of a letter.

Remind children that an illustrator might include details in pictures that the words in the story do not tell.

Writing the word migratory and migrate on the board, the teacher will explain that migrate means "travel a long way to live somewhere else." She will then discuss whale/animal migration.

Discussion of the kinds of whales. She will show the children pictures of various whales and explain that the whales are divided into two groups.

Using "A Whale Scale" children will measure the length of the various types of whales.

Write in different forms for different purposes such as lists to record, letters to invite or thank, and stories or poems to entertain

Use more complex capitalization and punctuation with increasing accuracy such as proper nouns, abbreviations, commas, apostrophes, and quotation marks

Compose complete sentences in written texts and use the appropriate end punctuation

Compare "A Whale Scale" to "Dear Mr. Blueberry". Students will write their responses in a Venn diagram.

Reinforce words with ue, ew, and ui.

Teach/Model/Practice.