Balloons Over Broadway activities and lesson plan ideas

Our Balloons Over Broadway Activities are now digital for distance learning with editable teaching slides and worksheets based on Melissa Sweet’s book. Read aloud the November 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

☐ summarizing and retelling

☐ analyzing character

☐ analyzing setting

☐ making connections

☐ identifying genre

☐ identifying the main idea

☐ cause and effect

◼️ SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ perseverance and grit

☐ problem-solving

◼️ GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ action verbs

☐ proper nouns

☐ adjectives

☐ punctuation

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT:

Balloons Over Broadway tells the true story of Tony Sarg, the original puppeteer of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Even when he was a young child, Tony enjoyed making and creating things. As he grew up, he started to make marionettes when he noticed people were no longer making them for children. He became known for his puppets and Macy’s asked Tony to help with their window displays. They liked his work so much they asked Tony to help them create a parade. Tony worked to design parade floats that everyone on the streets could see and enjoy. His work becomes so popular that Macy’s decided to have the parade each year, what we now know as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Students will love this nonfiction book that teaches the history behind this popular parade.

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