Big Al tries to make friends by disguising himself and acting silly but the other fish are still scared. Have students predict whether Big Al will be successful each time he tries a new strategy to make friends. Confirm the predictions with evidence from the text.

In the beginning of the book, Big Al does not have any friends and is lonely. Have you ever felt lonely? 

Big Al tries to make friends by doing things he thinks the other fish will like. Can you think of a time you tried to make new friends?

Big Al saves the little fish, but gets stuck in the net himself. How do you think he is feeling? How do you think the little fish feel?

Remind students that vowels and some consonants make more than one sound and sometimes we need to try different sounds to find the word that sounds right and makes sense. Model trying a different sound with words from the text such as: was, have, teeth, stop, very, flopped.

There is a wide range of punctuation used in the story (exclamation marks, question marks, commas, ellipses) to indicate a change in reading rate or intonation. Use sentences from the story to model this strategy, showing students which punctuation caused you to change your rate or intonation. For example: But then one scratchy little grain of sand got stuck in his gills and he . . . and hehe . . . and he sn . . . and he SSSNEEEEEEEZED.

Big Al and the little fish feel many emotions throughout the story, which are supported by the pictures. Model for students how to read the text with feeling based on the pictures. Several words are written in all caps. Discuss with students that the author does this to emphasize the words and model how they choose be read to convey feeling. 

Point out and discuss 2-3 interesting vocabulary words throughout the story. For example: "Listen to this word . . . disguise. I love the sound of this word. What do you think it means? Listen to the sentence and see if you can figure out the meaning from clues in the sentence or picture." Write each word on the class word collector. Review words daily. Some possible words to use are: disguise, bubbled, thumping, bulged, tangled, fierce.