Dragons Love Tacos activities and lesson plan ideas

Our Dragons Love Tacos Activities are now digital for distance learning with editable teaching slides and worksheets based on Adam Rubin’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 predictions

☐ point of view

☐ analyzing illustrations

☐ making connections

☐ asking and answering questions

☐ cause and effect

◼️ SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ self-regulation

☐ apologizing

◼️ GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ adjectives

☐ punctuation

☐ shades of meaning

☐ types of sentences

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT:

In the book Dragons Love Tacos, a narrator teaches the reader about dragons’ favorite food, tacos. They also explain that if you’re going to feed dragons tacos, make sure there are no spicy toppings.

Dragons do not like spicy salsa. The little boy in the story loves dragons and decides to have a taco party for them. However, he doesn’t realize the mild salsa he bought actually has pieces of jalapeno peppers in it! Students will love reading about what happens when the dragons eat the spicy salsa and how they make amends afterward.

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