GOLDFISH ON VACATION activities and lesson plan ideas

This GOLDFISH ON VACATION Activities and Interactive Read Aloud Resource Book Companion Packet includes lesson plans, reading comprehension questions, vocabulary, grammar, phonics, writing and word study activities with both printable and digital student pages.

Following an interactive read aloud of the picture book, GOLDFISH ON VACATION by Sally Lloyd-Jones, choose from the included collection of either printable activities or go paperless and use the digital activities to practice standards-based skills. We've even included editable teaching slides themed to match the book!

THIS READING UNIT FOCUSES ON USING THE MENTOR TEXT TO TEACH:

◼️READING STRATEGIES

☐ MAKING INFERENCES

☐ SUMMARIZE / RETELL

☐ ANALYZING SETTING

☐ SEQUENCING

☐ CAUSE AND EFFECT

◼️GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ PLURAL NOUNS

☐ IRREGULAR VERBS

☐ COMPOUND WORDS

☐ PREPOSITIONS

◼️SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ FRIENDSHIP

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT:

H and Baby Em and Little O lived in their apartment in the city. They had three goldfish: Barracuda and Patch and Fiss. It was summer, and the children enjoyed looking at the old fountain outside their window. It was broken and covered in ivy, but their grandfather told them stories of what the fountain used to be like.

Back before people had cars, people got around the city by riding horses. They horses would stop at the fountain for water and children even splashed and played in the fountain.

One day, the children noticed a sign on the fountain. The city was going to have a goldfish vacation in the fountain that summer. The children rushed home to tell their fish and grandpa. As it got closer to the vacation, the children watched a man start to clean up the fountain. He added water, reeds and lily pads.

On the first day of the vacation, many children gathered at the fountain to drop off their fish. Throughout the summer, the children returned to visit their goldfish. Soon, they came to the fountain to see all the other children. Grandpa sat with them and told everyone stories of what the fountain was like when he was a boy.

At the end of the summer, all of the children went into the fountain to get their fish. They jumped and splashed just like Grandpa did many years before.

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