With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about key details in a text.
| Name |
Description |
| Making Friends with Harry and Willy and Carrothead | Through a story about three boys who become friends, children learn the importance of understanding that people who are different have strengths. This lesson focuses on friendship, self-confidence, and dealing with conflicts and teasing. This lesson addresses the following literacy skills: ask and answer questions about details and unknown words in text and write an opinion. |
| Rectangles Rock! | Using the book Mouse Shapes as a springboard text, students will identify the main idea of the story and locate specific details to support the story. They will then use information in the story, attribute blocks, and discussion to identify a rectangle, its name, and its attributes. |
| Sweetie Cake Pops | In this Kindergarten MEA lesson, students will work cooperatively to help Sweetie Cake Pops improve their recipe. They will work in groups to look at a data table and generate responses orally and written. Additionally, this lesson has a mathematical focus of skip counting by tens. Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom. |
| Monkey Business: A Problem | In this close reading lesson, the teacher will read aloud Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina. Students will answer text-dependent questions and explain the meaning of new vocabulary. They will identify sight words and choral read repetitive parts of the text. Students will identify the setting, characters, and important events (including the problem and solution) and record these on a story map. They will retell the story and create a tri-fold book with illustrations and sentences explaining the beginning, middle, and end of the story. After analyzing the text, students will draw and dictate or write to explain the problem and solution in the text. |
| The Kissing Hand and A Pocket Full of Kisses: Compare and Contrast | In this close reading lesson, students will compare and contrast the actions of the characters in two of Audrey Penn's beloved books, The Kissing Hand and A Pocket Full of Kisses. They will answer text-dependent questions, and they will describe and sequence story elements as they analyze the two books. Students will truly enjoy interacting with these two delightful stories! |
| Five Little Monkeys: Comparing and Contrasting | In this close reading lesson, students will compare and contrast the actions of the characters in two of Eileen Christelow's beloved books, Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed and Five Little Monkeys Sitting in a Tree. They will answer text-dependent questions and describe story elements as they analyze the two books. Students will truly enjoy interacting with these two delightful stories! |
| If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and Take Him to School: Comparing and Contrasting | In this close reading lesson, students will compare and contrast the actions of the characters in two of Laura Numeroff's beloved books, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and If You Take a Mouse to School. They will answer text-dependent questions, and they will describe and sequence story elements as they analyze the two books. Students will truly enjoy interacting with these two delightful stories! |
| The Grouchy Ladybug and The Mixed-Up Chameleon | In this multi-day lesson, students will engage in a variety of literacy activities while reading The Grouchy Ladybug and The Mixed-Up Chameleon by Eric Carle. Students will answer text-dependent questions as they describe the characters, setting, and important events in the story. They will complete a story map and story sequence organizer and use them to retell what happened at the beginning, middle, and end of each story. Finally, they will use the two graphic organizers to plan their own narrative about what happens next to one of the characters. |
| Do You Like Green Eggs and Ham? | In this 5-day lesson, students will engage in a variety of activities using the beloved Dr. Seuss books, Green Eggs and Ham and Wacky Wednesday. Students will explain the roles of the author and illustrator of a story. They will identify rhyming words in the stories and produce additional words that rhyme. Students will answer text-dependent questions to complete a story map and sequencing graphic organizer about each story. Using the graphic organizers, students will retell the stories. Finally, students will choose their favorite Dr. Seuss book and write an opinion statement telling why the book is their favorite. |
| Going Camping | In this lesson, students will learn about camping by reading stories about familiar characters that have gone camping, including Little Critter, Fred and Ted, and Curious George. Students will learn about how to make a camping list and compare and contrast the experiences of the characters in the stories using a Venn Diagram. They will create an opinion explaining what they think are the most important items to take camping. |
| Finding the One!! | Students will sort and classify rocks by observable properties, such as size, shape, color and texture. (The properties of temperature and weight are not addressed in this lesson). |
| All This Talk about Weather is Making Me Hungry! | This lesson uses When a Storm Comes Up by Allan Fowler and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs by Judi and Ron Barrett to introduce four major weather patterns (rain showers, blizzards, tornadoes and hurricanes). The students will apply what they have learned to identify, describe, and illustrate the weather patterns using white liquid glue and oil pastels. It is recommended that this lesson be broken into two parts, with at least twelve hours in-between each lesson so the white liquid glue has time to dry. |
| Character Education Read Alouds | Sharing quality literature provides the teacher with great opportunities for the class to discuss the interactions and feelings of people. It also allows the students to make connections based on their own feelings and experiences. |
| Having Fun with Pancakes for Breakfast by Tomie DePaola | In this lesson students will “read” the wordless book Pancakes for Breakfast by Tomie DePaola and complete several activities. Students will create a graph of their favorite breakfast items, discuss the story elements of the text, and help Tomie DePaola out by adding their own words to his story by creating a new class book. |
