Stella Brings the Family activities and lesson plan ideas

Our Stella Brings the Family Activities are now digital for distance learning with editable teaching slides and worksheets based on Jannell Cannon's book. Read aloud the Mother's Day 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

☐ comparing and contrasting

☐ making connections

☐ plot | problem - solution

☐ author's purpose

◼️ SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ appreciating diversity

◼️ GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ proper nouns

☐ possessive pronouns

☐ irregular verbs

☐ contractions

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT:

Stella’s teacher tells the class they will be having a special Mother’s Day Celebration at school. Her classmates are excited, but Stella is nervous. She doesn’t have a mother as all her classmates do, she has two fathers. Stella worries about who she will bring to the party. Her classmates wonder if she doesn’t have a mother, who makes her lunch, reads her stories and gives her kisses. Stella explains that her fathers do all of that and there are a lot of people that give her kisses. Jonathan suggests that Stella bring everyone to the party and the children start preparing.

On the day of the party, Stella brings her fathers, grandmother, aunt, uncle and cousin to the party. Everyone has a great time celebrating!

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