THE TREE LADY activities, worksheets & lesson plan ideas

 This THE TREE LADY Activities and Interactive Read Aloud Resource Book Companion Packet includes lesson plans, reading comprehension questions, vocabulary, grammar, phonics, writing and word study activities with both printable and digital student pages.

 Following an interactive read aloud of the picture book, THE TREE LADY by Joseph Hopkins, choose from the included collection of either printable activities or go paperless and use the digital activities to practice standards-based skills. We've even included editable teaching slides themed to match the book!

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

◼️READING STRATEGIES

☐ SUMMARIZE / RETELL

☐ ANALYZING CHARACTER

☐ IDENTIFYING GENRE

☐ SEQUENCING

☐ AUTHOR’S PURPOSE

◼️GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ CAPITALIZATION

☐ IRREGULAR VERBS

☐ POSSESSIVE NOUNS

☐ TIME ORDER WORDS

◼️SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ PERSEVERANCE

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT:

H. Joseph Hopkin’s book, The Tree Lady, is a biography of Katherine Olivia Sessions. It tells the story of how Kate became known as the Mother of Balboa Park, located in San Diego.

Kate grew up in Northern California and loved being in the woods under the trees. Unlike other girls at the time, Kate liked to get her hands dirty and study science. She even went to college to study science and was the first woman to graduate from that school.  

After graduating, Kate moved to San Diego and became a teacher. San Diego was very different than anywhere Kate had lived before. There were no trees and it was a very dry landscape. After a few years of teaching, Kate decided to become a gardener. She made it her mission to bring trees to San Diego. Kate began collecting trees that could grow in San Diego. She wrote letters to gardeners around the world asking for seeds. Soon, there were trees all over San Diego and people were even planting them in their yards. 

When a big exposition was coming to San Diego, it was decided the park, Balboa Park, needed more trees for shade. Kate worked to plant trees all over the park. People couldn’t believe the lush park that had been created. Her work planting all the trees made her known as “The Mother of Balboa Park.”

This biography will teach students all about Kate whose love of trees changed the city of San Diego.

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