Two bodies of disappearing water, the Aral Sea and Lake Victoria, are profiled in an activity designed to develop comprehension. One set of follow-up activities illustrates the importance of referring back to the text, a key test-taking skill, while the other activity develops higher-order comprehension skills. The WAPs are available on the emergent, primary, and intermediate levels. This activity correlates with the IRA/NCTE Standard, “Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).”
