Lost and Found

Social-emotional learning: responsible decision-making

theme, inference, key details, character’s motivation, compare and contrast, vocabulary

Preview Text Features (10 minutes)

• Direct students to the illustration on pages 16 and 17, and invite them to study it. Ask: How might the illustration relate to the title of the story? How do you think the characters feel about their discovery? What makes you think this?   
• Point out the subheads and the Pause and Think boxes at the end of each section. Ask students to predict what problems the characters might face, based on the subheads.

Introduce Vocabulary (15 minutes)

• This story includes six vocabulary words that are highlighted in bold: unfamiliar, government, debris, beachcombing, artifacts, and loot.
• The words are defined at the bottom of the column in which they appear. Discuss the meanings of the words, looking at how they are used in the story, to help students further understand them. 
• Distribute our vocabulary activity for more practice with these words. You may also play our Vocabulary Slideshow.

Set a Purpose for Reading

• We have created a fiction package that helps students focus on one important aspect of the story—in this case, figuring out the theme of a story. The tasks in the Think and Read and Think and Write boxes work together to support this skill focus. Have one student read the task in each box. 
• Read aloud the first Pause and Think box on page 14. These questions will check basic comprehension. (Students will delve into higher-level work with the close-reading questions.)

Close-Reading Questions (30 minutes) 

• In the first section, Laurel drinks her orange juice from a plain glass. Why does Laurel think that it “hadn’t tasted as good” as it did the last time she visited North Carolina? (inference) Her family’s cottage had been damaged in the storm and they had to stay in a different house that was unfamiliar to her. She missed using her grandma’s mug, as she always had, and this made her sad.
• Why is the second section called “Missing Home”? (key details) The storm has damaged the cottage, and parts of it are broken. Laurel and her family miss the cottage. The storm has also damaged and washed away things that can’t be replaced, such as family photos and the shell art Laurel’s grandmother made. Those items had special meaning to Laurel and her family, especially since her grandparents died.
• Why does Trevor want to keep the treasure a secret? (character’s motivation) Trevor thinks he might find more gold coins. He hopes that they are worth money. If they are, he thinks his family could use the money to fix the cottage.
• What does Laurel think they should do about the treasure? How is that different from what Trevor thinks they should do? (compare and contrast) Laurel doesn’t like the idea of keeping the coins. She says that since the coins are on a National Seashore, they belong to the government. Trevor doesn’t want to follow the rules. He believes that since they are the only people who know about the coins, they can keep them. He thinks his grandfather might even have liked the idea of using them to fix the cottage.
• What does Laurel finally realize about the rental house at the end of the story? (theme) Laurel realizes that the objects in a house aren’t so important. What matters is being together with one’s family—that’s what can make any house feel like a home.

Critical-Thinking Question (10 minutes)

• What makes Laurel change her mind about the rental home? (inference) At first, Laurel could only think about the objects that had been lost when a bad storm destroyed her family’s summer cottage in North Carolina. She just sat on the beach, doing nothing. When Trevor found the gold coins, her heart pounded in excitement. Then her heart sank when he said he wanted to keep the treasure a secret. She knew it was wrong. Getting him to do the right thing made her realize that it is family, not objects, that make a place feel like home.​
  

• Call on a volunteer to read aloud the Think and Write box at the bottom of page 19.
• Distribute our Fiction Reading Kit, which focuses on key reading skills, including our featured skill, theme. Have students work in small groups to complete it.