Santa Bruce activities and lesson plan ideas

Our Santa Bruce Activities are now digital for distance learning with editable teaching slides and worksheets based on Ryan T. Higgins' book. Read aloud the Christmas 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 setting

☐ analyzing illustrations

☐ point of view

☐ plot | problem - solution

☐ cause and effect

◼️ SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ advocation

☐ problem-solving

◼️ GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ prefixes

☐ suffixes

☐ punctuation

☐ onomatopoeia

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT:

Santa Bruce is a hilarious story about a bear with a mistaken identity. Bruce the bear, does not like winter or the holidays. He wants to stay inside and sleep but his family wants to celebrate Christmas. When Bruce is outside with his long underwear and hat, a raccoon mistakes him for Santa! Within no time, all the critters in the forest are at Bruce’s house wanting to sit on Santa’s lap. The mice in Bruce’s house even promise that Bruce will deliver presents to everyone. Despite all his protests, Bruce is stuck acting as Santa and must give out presents all around town.

Students will laugh out loud during this fun Christmas read-aloud about a bear that doesn’t like Christmas.

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