School's First Day of School activities and lesson plan ideas

Our School's First Day of School Activities are now digital for distance learning with editable teaching slides and worksheets based on Adam Rex's book. Read aloud the Back to School picture book then use the printables or go paperless with Google or Seesaw to practice standards-based skills.

THIS READING UNIT FOCUSES ON USING THE MENTOR TEXT TO TEACH:

◼️ READING STRATEGIES

☐ making inferences

☐ making predictions

☐ analyzing character

☐ analyzing setting

☐ analyzing illustrations

☐ making connections

☐ ask and answer questions

◼️ SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ feelings

◼️ GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ nouns

☐ verb tense

☐ commas

☐ quotation marks

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT:

Over the summer a brand new school was built, it was named Frederick Douglass Elementary. While the janitor cleaned, School was happy it was just the two of them. However, the janitor explained that soon the teachers and students would come for the first day and School did not know how to feel about that.

When the children came, they were everywhere. They played on the playground, used the lockers and opened all the doors. School felt sad when he heard some students say they hated school and a little girl had to be carried in by her mother. As the day goes on, School starts to enjoy himself. He hears a funny joke at lunch and learns about shapes in a kindergarten class. At the end of the day, School asks the janitor if he can invite everyone to come back again tomorrow.

THIS COLLECTION OF ACTIVITIES and LESSON IDEAS INCLUDES:

➜ Comprehension Questions categorized by reading strategy; text-dependent
➜ Social-Emotional Learning guidance lesson ideas & discussion topics based on the story
➜ Vocabulary Activities with kid-friendly definitions
➜ Grammar Topics selected to align with the text
➜ Focus Sentences use the book & author's craft as a mentor text to improve writing
➜ Lesson Planner summary, background info and planning space

➜ Story Mapping Printable identify character, setting, problem and solution

➜ Making Words Activity Page use any word from the book

➜ Focus Sentence copy work, identifying elements of the sentence, rewriting)

➜ Design a New Book Cover demonstrate understanding of the text by creating an illustration

➜ Predicting Activity primary-ruled and wider-ruled versions
➜ Summarizing Somebody → Wanted → But → Then → Finally

➜ Comparing and Contrasting using a Venn Diagram

➜ Cause and Effect analyze how events affect one another

➜ Visualization illustrate visualizations from the story and support thinking with text-based evidence

➜ Making Connections identify text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections

➜ Thematic Writing Paper Use with the Writing Prompts... Makes a Great Bulletin Board

➜ 2 Sequencing Activities First → Next → Then → Last and Beginning → Middle → End

➜ 2 Vocabulary Activities Vocabulary Booklet and Word Mapping

➜ 2 Character Trait Activities listing traits and supporting traits with text-based evidence
➜ 30 Text-Based Writing Prompts 3 prompts for each of the following types of writing:

• narrative
• persuasive / opinion
• descriptive
• expository / informative
• creative / story writing
• procedure / how-to
• list-making
• letter / postcard writing
• poem
• book reviews

INCLUDED DIGITAL ACTIVITIES:

➜ 5 Teaching Slides to use for instruction (add questions, vocabulary, instructions, etc)

➜ 15 Student Pages for use in Google™️ Classroom or as editable files to create customized printables