After reading page 2, ask students, “What do you think a person, or egg, can do to make them a ‘good egg’?” Have students offer their ideas of what makes someone a good person.

After reading, “I’d had enough!” on page 14, have students predict what the good egg will do. “What does it mean when a person has had enough? What do you think the good egg is going to do?”

There are many points throughout The Good Egg where you can pause and ask students to make a connection to the story. Some examples: Ask the students, “Have you ever felt like the good egg? Like everyone around you was acting badly and you were the only good person? What happened? What did you do?” Or, “Have you ever felt like you just needed some time away from the people you live with? Like you just needed to have some alone time?”

When we read, sometimes we come across tricky words that we don’t know right away. A great strategy to help us figure them out is to listen carefully to the sounds in the word. That means we slow down, say the sounds we see, and put them together to read the word correctly.

Let’s try it with some words from The Good Egg.

• Rescuing (p. 1) – Let’s break it into parts: res-cue-ing. Listen to each sound as we blend them together
• Groceries (p. 3) – We can chunk this word: gro-cer-ies. Does it sound like a word we know?
• Ignored (p. 7) – Let’s stretch out the sounds: ig-nored. What word do we hear?
• Behavior (p. 9) – Try saying each part: be-hav-ior. Listening carefully helps us figure it out!
• Exhausted (p. 11) – This is a long one! Let’s say each sound: ex-haus-ted. Do you recognize it?
• Wandered (p. 17) – Break it down: wan-dered. Listening to the sounds helps us say it correctly!

Explain to students that as you read, your expression changes with different punctuation, such as question marks and exclamation marks. Model the changes in voice when you read. Some examples:

• P. 1—“I was just rescuing this cat. Know why?” 
• P. 8—“I’d had enough!”

Readers will become more fluent when we increase their exposure to reading. The books by Jory John and Pete Oswald have become favorites in my classroom. They are fun, and there are many opportunities to work toward all four goals. Here are some other examples of great books by Jory John and Pete Oswald:

• The Bad Seed 
• The Cool Bean 
• The Couch Potato 
• The Smart Cookie 
• The Great Eggscape

Some possible words: dozen, recycled, fateful, literally, exhausted