A Turkey for Thanksgiving activities and lesson plan ideas

Our A Turkey for Thanksgiving Activities are now digital for distance learning with editable teaching slides and worksheets based on Eve Bunting’s book. Read aloud the Thanksgiving 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

☐ synthesizing

☐ analyzing illustrations

☐ plot | problem and solution

☐ ask and answer questions

◼️ SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ friendship

☐ kindness

◼️ GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ nouns

☐ compound words

☐ prepositions

☐ capitalization

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT:

In the book A Turkey for Thanksgiving, Mr. and Mrs. Moose are getting ready to have their friends over for Thanksgiving dinner. When everything is set up, Mrs. Moose is disappointed that she does not have a turkey at dinner, so Mr. Moose decides to go out and find her one. As Mr. Moose wanders around looking for a turkey, he runs into friends along the way. Each friend joins him in the search. When they come upon a turkey’s nest, the friends try to catch the turkey. Mr. Moose pushes the frightened turkey home to Mrs. Moose. When they return home, Mrs. Moose is so happy to have Turkey at dinner. She makes sure there is food he likes to eat and sits him right next to her. Turkey is relieved to find that he is sitting at the table and not on it. All of the friends enjoy eating their Thanksgiving dinner together.

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