Sparky activities and lesson plan ideas

Our Sparky Activities are now digital for distance learning with editable teaching slides and worksheets based on Jenny Offill's book. Read aloud the 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

☐ summarize / retell

☐ analyzing character

☐ making connections

☐ ask and answer questions

◼️ SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ trust

☐ honesty

◼️ GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ base words

☐ capitalization

☐ punctuation

☐ antonyms

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT: 

Sparky is a book about a young girl who wants a pet, but her mother keeps telling her no. She is willing to get any pet, that is how much she wants one. Finally, her mother promises she can get a pet if it doesn’t need to be walked, bathed or fed. Determined, the young girl goes to the library to research the perfect pet and discovers the sloth. This animal is very lazy and eats the leaves off trees. Soon enough, her sloth is delivered and she names it Sparky. Quickly, she learns Sparky is very lazy when he loses every game they play. The girl feels discouraged when a classmate says Sparky isn’t a good pet because he can’t do tricks. The girl decides to hold a Sloth Extravaganza and tries to teach Sparky tricks. The show does not go as she hoped, the only trick Sparky can do is play dead. At the end of the story, the girl learns to appreciate Sparky for who he is and enjoy his company.

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