This lesson uses familiar words from The Gingerbread Man to help early readers learn letter–sound correspondence. Students begin with a teacher-conducted shared reading of the story. As students listen, they read the words in the refrain along with the teacher. After the third hearing of the story, students choose their favorite words from the story and identify the sounds that the letters make in the words. Students conclude the lesson by using the newly learned words in an online story of their own creation. To further reinforce letter-sound correspondence, students play an online interactive Picture Match game.

Students first learn how the sound-symbol correspondence in letters and words work so that they better understand how text is used.

From the website: "Epic! provides an unlimited selection of eBooks that can be instantly discovered, read and shared with friends. Personalized for each individual reader, Epic! is the only place to access thousands of high quality, curated children's books without the need to purchase or download them one by one. Beautifully designed for mobile and featuring fun, game-like elements, Epic! provides kids with a personal library they can take anywhere. In a world of unlimited screen time, Epic! is a smart alternative to games and videos. Epic! is available on all iOS and Android devices."
Availalable as a web based resource and a free app on any platform.

Junie B., as she insists on being called, is an opinionated, lively, character in Barbara Park's series of books, and she is sure to delight primary students. In this unit, the teacher reads aloud selections from Junie B., First Grader (at last!). Students discuss the text with a partner and then individually compose sentences about key events from the story. Each student also creates and adds items to a mystery box, or a box that holds items or pictures referenced in the story. After students have listened to the entire story, they use their mystery boxes to retell the story to a classmate. As a culminating activity, students use the mystery boxes and the sentences they composed to make a related stapleless book about the story.

This lesson uses the book Thunder Rose by Jerdine Nolen to reinforce the common elements, or text structure, of tall tales. As the text is read aloud, students examine the elements of the book that are characteristic of tall tales. Then using what they've learned over the course of the unit and lesson, they write tall tales of their own.