LEVEL B

Lesson Plan What Has These Feet?

About the Book
Text Type: Nonfiction/Description Page Count: 10 Word Count: 51

Book Summary
What Has These Feet? asks students to view photos of animal feet
and guess what animal the feet belong to. Students turn the pages
to read the answers and view full photos of each animal. The book
teaches phrasing and punctuation for questions and statements.

About the Lesson

Targeted Reading Strategy
• Connect to prior knowledge

Objectives
• Use the reading strategy of using prior knowledge to understand text
• Ask and answer questions
• Listen for words that begin with the /f/ sound
• Associate the letter Ff with the /f/ sound
• Understand punctuation at the end of questions and statements
• Understand content vocabulary

Materials
Green text indicates resources available on the website
• Book—What Has These Feet? (copy for each student)
• Chalkboard or dry erase board
• Illustrations or photographs of animals
• Question and answer, content vocabulary worksheets
• Discussion cards

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

Vocabulary
• High-frequency words: has, these, what
• Content words:
Story critical: animals (n.), elephant (n.) feet (n.), shark (n.), soft (adj.), tiger (n.)

Before Reading
Build Background
• Assemble photographs or illustrations of several animals. Create a frame for the pictures that
displays only the animals’ feet. Ask students to describe the feet they see and guess what animal
has the feet. Encourage students to explain their thinking. Then show students entire pictures.
• Ask students to sketch an animal’s foot. Have students share their sketch with the class. Ask students
to guess what animal has that foot. Have the artist describe what the animal foot looks like.

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 LEVEL B
Lesson Plan (continued) What Has These Feet?
Book Walk
Introduce the Book
• Show students the front and back covers of the book. Ask students to share what they see in the
photos. Read the title and author’s name. Explain that the title asks a question: What Has These
Feet? Show students the title page, and ask them to predict what feet and animals might be
shown in the book. Encourage students to explain their thinking.
Introduce the Reading Strategy: Connect to prior knowledge
• Model how good readers use prior knowledge to help them read and understand as they read.
Think-aloud: When I read a book, I try to think about what I already know about the topic of the
book. When I look at the picture on the front cover, I see huge feet and huge toenails. I also
see many wrinkles on the animal’s legs and feet. I need to think about what animal is big and
has many wrinkles, so that I can answer the author’s question in the title: What Has These Feet?
I remember once when I went to the zoo, I saw an elephant. I remember that the elephant’s
feet were huge and that there were many wrinkles on its legs and feet. I predict that one of the
animals in the book is going to be an elephant because I remember what an elephant’s feet look
like. Good readers always try to make a connection between the book they are reading and what
they already know from their own experience.
• As students read, encourage them to use other reading strategies in addition to the targeted
strategy presented in this section.
Introduce the Vocabulary
Go through each page of the book with students. Use questions to preview the content
vocabulary and the language patterns they will encounter in the text. For example, on page 3,
ask: What kind of animal has these feet? Have students circle the words animal and feet. On
page 4, ask students to find the word elephant. Have them describe the elephant’s feet and
find the word big.
• Point out the words at the bottom of the page. Explain that the words on the page contain the
author’s words and that they are read from left to right. Demonstrate how to read from left to
right, pointing to each word as you read. Have students read a page while pointing to each word.
• Write the high-frequency word has on the board or on chart paper. Read the word to students.
Turn to page 3 in the book. Read the sentence to students while pointing to the words. Point
to the word has.
• Distribute books to students, and invite them to count the number of times has appears in the
book. Repeat the same activity for the words what and these.
Set the Purpose
• Tell students as they read the book to look closely at the pictures and think about what they
know about animals’ feet to answer the author’s question: What has these feet?

During Reading
Student Reading
• Guide the reading: Have students put a sticky note on page 8 and read to the end of that page.
Remind students to point to the words and use word-attack strategies to figure out unknown
words. Ask students to reread the pages if they finish before everyone else.
• Listen to individual students read the text orally. Monitor their use of reading strategies, and
intervene when necessary to prompt for strategy use.
• Encourage students to share their predictions about what animal has the different feet as they
read pages 3, 5, and 7. Ask them to share the prior knowledge they used to help them make
their predictions.

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 LEVEL B
Lesson Plan (continued) What Has These Feet?
• Model the use of prior knowledge while reading.
Think-aloud: Before I read the book, I predicted that an elephant was going to be one of the
animals in the story because I looked at the photograph and thought about what I already knew
about elephants’ feet. This helped me understand what I was reading and helped me make a
good prediction. I was right, and the photograph was of an elephant’s feet. When I looked at the
photograph on page 7. I could tell that the feet belonged to some type of cat because I remembered
that they looked a lot like my cat’s feet, but bigger and stripped, which is what made me think
of what I knew about big cats and led me to predict that the animal was a tiger.
• Show students the picture on page 9. Have them use their prior knowledge to predict what
animal might be in the photograph. Ask them to use their prior knowledge to share what kind
of feet this animal might have.
• Have students finish reading the book independently.
Have students make a small question mark in their book beside any word they do not
understand or cannot pronounce. These can be addressed in the discussion that follows.

After Reading
• 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 Reading Strategy
• Reinforce how using what they already know about animal feet helped them understand
what they were reading.

Teach the Comprehension Skill: Ask and answer questions

• Discussion: Allow time for students to react to the story. Ask them why they think the author
put a picture of a shark in a book called What Has These Feet?
• Introduce and model: Explain to students that understanding the organization of a book will help
them understand what they read.
Think-aloud: Sometimes when I read a book, I think about how the book is organized. This makes
reading the book easier and more enjoyable. When I was reading the book What Has These
Feet?, I noticed that the text is written in a pattern. The author asks a question on one page and
then gives the answer to the question on the next page. This pattern of question and answer is
repeated four times in the book. I also noticed that the question that the author asks is always
the same: What kind of animal has these feet?
• Check for understanding: Have students turn to page 3 and read the question. Have students turn
to page 4 and read the answer.
• Independent practice: Have students complete the question-and-answer worksheet. Discuss
their responses.

Build Skills
Phonological Awareness: Discriminate initial consonant /f/ sound
• Have students listen as you say the words feet and foot. Ask students what sounds they hear
at the beginning of both of these words.
• Tell students that you are going to say some words. When they hear a word that begins with the
/f/ sound, they should stamp their foot. Use the following words: feet, animal, finger, feel, duck,
elephant, foot, fiddle, five, tiger, shark.
Phonics: Initial consonant Ff
• Have students listen as you say the words fish, fan, and fox. Say: I hear the /f/ sound at the
beginning of these words.
• Have students turn to page 7 and read the sentence. Have them locate and read the word that
has the /f/ sound.

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 LEVEL B
Lesson Plan (continued) What Has These Feet?
• Draw a large foot on a piece of chart paper. Have students brainstorm other words that begin
with the initial consonant Ff. Write the words the students listed on the foot, and underline
the letter Ff. Have students echo as you read the words aloud.
Grammar and Mechanics: End punctuation
• Turn to page 3 in the book. Read the sentence aloud. Point to the question mark. Explain that
this mark is called a question mark and is used at the end of a sentence that asks a question.
Have students locate and read other sentences in the book that contain question marks.
• Turn to page 4. Read the page aloud. Point to the period. Explain that a period is used at
the end of a sentence that tells something. Have students locate and read other sentences
in the book that end with periods.
• Have students use a crayon to highlight the periods in the book in red and the question mark
in yellow.
Word Work: Content words
• Have students cut out the photos of the animals from the content vocabulary worksheet. Have
them put the photos face up in front of them. Say: I am thinking of an animal that has big feet
with wrinkles. Have students hold up the photo of an animal you described. Do the same activity
with several other animals. Select volunteers to make the descriptive statements

Build Fluency
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.

Extend the Reading

Writing and Art Connection
Write the sentence: ________ has ______ feet. Ask students to fill in the first blank with the name
of an animal and the second blank with a description of the animal’s feet. Have students create
an illustration to match their writing.
Math Connection
Have students measure the length of their feet with non-standard units, such as blocks or cubes.
Have students trace their foot on a piece of construction paper. Have them use the drawing of their
foot to measure objects in the room.
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 as 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.

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 LEVEL B
Lesson Plan (continued) What Has These Feet?
Assessment
Monitor students to determine if they can:
• consistently connect their prior knowledge to photos and text while reading
• use their understanding of the question/answer pattern in the book to make sense of text
• discriminate words that begin with the /f/ sound from those that begin with other consonant sounds
• locate and read words that contain initial consonant Ff
• match content vocabulary to basic animal descriptions
Comprehension Check
• Retelling Rubric

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