Guiding Comprehension

Identify Facts • Literal

What does the author say about Lake Baikal?

It is the oldest and deepest lake in the world.

Vocabulary • Compound

Words

Lake Superior is a freshwater lake. What is a freshwater lake like?

The water is not salty.

then… use the vocabulary instruction on
p. 45.

If… students have difficulty determining the meaning of the compound word,

Compound Words

Graphic Sources • Inferential

Look at the chart on p. 44. It shows the depth of Lake Baikal compared to the height of the Empire State Building. How many Empire State Buildings could fit in Lake Baikal?

Four.

VOCABULARY STRATEGY

Compound Words

TEACH

Explain that compound words are long words that are made up of two smaller word parts.
Sometimes you can divide the compound word into its smaller word parts and use the smaller words to figure out the meaning of the longer word.
Model figuring out what freshwater means on p. 44.

MODEL I see the word freshwater on p. 44. If I break the word up, I can see that I have the two smaller words: fresh and water. I know what water is. And I know that fresh can mean "free from salt." So a freshwater lake must not be salty.

PRACTICE AND ASSESS

Have students continue on through the selection to identify other compound words. Have them break the longer words into their smaller word parts and try to figure out what the compound words mean. (overtake and outrun,
p. 52; to pass by going faster and to run faster than) To assess, have students use the words in a sentence.

"Hottest, Coldest, Highest, Deepest"
by Steve Jenkins

Student Edition
Unit 4, pp. 40–53

Expository nonfiction gives information about the real world. Look for numbers that help you understand the facts in this Snapshot.

Earth has a lot of places that are record holders. You can find the driest deserts or wettest rain forests. You can find the highest mountain peak or the deepest ocean trench. Take a look at some of Earth's extremes!
Russia boasts the deepest lake. In one place, its Lake Baikal goes down 5,134 feet. At about 25 million years old, Baikal is also the oldest lake on Earth. Lake Superior is the largest of the five Great Lakes in North America. At nearly 32,000 square miles, it is Earth's largest freshwater lake. Though Lake Superior is about six times bigger than Lake Baikal, Lake Baikal holds a lot more water. In fact, Lake Baikal holds more water than all of the Great Lakes put together!
At 4,145 miles long, the Nile in Africa is Earth's longest river. But it doesn't hold the most river water. That honor goes to the second-longest river. South America's Amazon is 4,007 miles long and carries about 50 percent of all the river water on Earth. (The Yangtze River in Asia is the third-longest river, and the Mississippi-Missouri is the fourth.)
The peak of Mount Everest reaches 29,028 feet above sea level. It is Earth's highest mountain completely above the sea. Mauna Kea in Hawaii is really taller. But most of this mountain is under the sea. Only 13,796 feet of its 33,476 feet are above water. The deepest place on Earth is far below the Pacific Ocean. The Mariana Trench reaches a depth of 36,202 feet. The lowest spot on dry land is the shore of the Dead Sea, where it is 1,100 feet below sea level.
The very hottest place on Earth is in the Sahara Desert in Libya, North Africa. A temperature of over 136°F has been recorded there. The coldest place is in Vostok, Antarctica. It dipped down to a freezing -129°F there. The windiest place is at the top of Mount Washington in New Hampshire, where wind has reached 231 miles an hour. It is also very windy near the tops of the Himalayas, the world's tallest mountains.
South America has both the wettest and the driest places. Tutunendo, in Colombia, is really wet. It gets an average rainfall of 463 inches every year. Chile's Atacama Desert is the driest. It hasn't had any rain for 400 years!
Of all the waterfalls, Angel Falls in Venezuela is the highest. At 3,212 feet, it is almost eighteen times higher than the well-known Niagara Falls. Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, Africa, has the most water.
If you want to watch the tides, go to Canada's Bay of Fundy. Four times a day, the water rises and falls more than 50 feet. The tide there is really fast. Have a little fun when you visit--try to race the tide. Can you outrun it?
These are just a few of Earth's record holders. There are a lot more on our amazing planet!



	Close
	Fluency In Spanish, -er is pronounced like air in English. Spanish speakers may pronounce words like longer and higher as lon-gair and high-air. Because Spanish words do not end with -st, Spanish speakers may also drop the t from words ending in -est: longes instead of longest. Have Spanish-speaking students read sections of the selection aloud and pay particular attention to their pronunciation of these letters. Order by Particular Property Scientists use seven levels to classify, or organize, organisms: kingdom, phylum or division, class, order, family, genus, and species. At first, there were two categories for kingdom—animal and plant, but in 1969 scientists began to see the need for more categories, and there are now five (Animal, Plant, Fungi, Protista, and Monera). Rocks are classified too, first by the type of rock they are—igneous, sedimentary, or metamorphic—then by physical features such as color, shape, and hardness.

"Hottest, Coldest, Highest, Deepest" by Steve Jenkins

"Hottest, Coldest, Highest, Deepest"
by Steve Jenkins