LESSON 4 TEACHER’S GUIDE Neighbors by Kenyetta Ray Fountas-Pinnell Level I Informational Text Selection Summary The narrator, who lives in an apartment in a big city, tells about her neighbors and talks about what it means to be a good neighbor. Number of Words: 244 Characteristics of the Text Genre Text Structure Content Themes and Ideas Language and Literary Features Sentence Complexity Vocabulary Words Illustrations Book and Print Features Informational Text First-person narrator speaking in the present tense Setting shift: from nearby neighborhood to farther away (park, playground, school) Living in a big city Neighbors and neighborhoods It is rewarding to be a good neighbor. Good neighbors contribute to the community. First-person narrator has a conversational, informal tone (use of contractions, kids). Author uses neighbor in the denotative sense (it is defined on p. 3) and in the connotative sense (what it means to be a good neighbor). Each sentence begins on new line. Mix of short, simple and longer, more complex sentences (especially pp. 2, 5, 8) Commas used to set off a clause (p. 6) and the word too (p. 8) Potentially difficult vocabulary has photographic and text support: apartment, neighbors, friendly, everyone, garden, build, playground Mostly 1-, 2-, and a few 3-syllable words (family, apartment, everyone) Simple -s plurals (e.g., seeds, books), and -s inflected endings (lives, feels); two contractions (It’s on p. 5 and you’ll on page 10) Possible decoding challenges: neighbors, family, apartment, building, laughs, pictures Photographs complement text/support vocabulary (apartment, neighbor, everyone). Nine pages of text, with photographs at the top of each page © 2006. Fountas, I.C. & Pinnell, G.S. Teaching for Comprehending and Fluency, Heinemann, Portsmouth, N.H. Copyright © by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form