A Tiger Tail activities and lesson plan ideas

Our A Tiger Tail Activities are now digital for distance learning with editable teaching slides and worksheets based on Deborah Hopkinson'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

☐ making predictions

☐ analyzing illustrations

☐ ask and answer questions

☐ identifying genre

☐ identify theme, message, or moral

◼️ SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ patience

◼️ GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ action verbs

☐ irregular verbs

☐ base words

☐ homophones

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT: 

Anya is shocked when she wakes up to find she has grown a tiger tail, and it’s the first day of school. She worries about what her classmates will think. Anya’s parents are supportive and encouraging about her appearance, but Anya is still upset. She tries everything to pull off the tail and cover it up, but neither words. Anya tries to act sick and miss the bus to get out of going to school, but her parents catch on.

When Anya gets to school, she bumps into another classmate named Ben. She is surprised to see that Ben has bunny ears. When the two enter the classroom, everyone in the class is unique. There is one student in a wheelchair, someone wearing headphones, a student with ears like a mouse, and even the teacher has very big teeth. When Anya realizes the diversity in her classroom, she finally feels better about her tiger tail.

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