Can I Be Your Dog? activities and lesson plan ideas

Our Can I Be Your Dog? Activities are now digital for distance learning with editable teaching slides and worksheets based on Troy Cummings’ 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

☐ summarizing and retelling

☐ analyzing character

☐ asking and answering questions

☐ author's purpose

◼️ SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ feelings

☐ perseverance and grit

◼️ GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ adjectives

☐ interjections

☐ types of sentences

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT: 

The story Can I Be Your Dog? follows a homeless dog named Arfy who is looking for a family. Arfy writes letters to a family, a butcher, the fire department, the junkyard, and the scary last house on the road. Each time, Arfy gets a letter back saying that he can’t be their dog. Arfy feels discouraged each time but continues to write letters.

After hearing that even the last house on the road wouldn’t take him, Arfy becomes devastated and goes back to the box that he lives in on the street. There he receives a letter from the mail carrier Mitzy. She wants to be his person! Arfy is overjoyed that he finally found his forever home and goes to live with Mitzy.

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