Flight School activities and lesson plan ideas

Our Flight School Activities are now digital for distance learning with editable teaching slides and worksheets based on Lita Judge'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

☐ making inferences

☐ summarizing and retelling

☐ plot | problem and solution

☐ cause and effect

◼️ SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ goal setting

◼️ GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ articles

☐ nouns

☐ irregular verbs

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT: 

Penguin arrived at flight school excited to finally accomplish his dream of learning to fly. Despite his teacher, Flamingo, and her confusion to see a penguin in flight school, he joined the class anyway. Penguin went through all of the lessons with his classmates and it was finally time for their first flight. When it was his turn though, Penguin didn’t soar into the air like the others. Instead, he fell right into the ocean. Discouraged, Penguin decided it was time for him to go home.

As he was leaving, Flamingo called him back and had a plan. She allowed Penguin to experience flying by pulling him behind her. Although Penguin fell out of the air during flight, he was thrilled he finally accomplished his goal of soaring through the air. Soon after, Penguin returned to flight school with his friend Ostrich, who wanted to learn to fly too!

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