GUSTAVO activities, worksheets & lesson plan ideas

 This GUSTAVO 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, GUSTAVO by Flavia Z. Drago, 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 PREDICTIONS

☐ ANALYZING CHARACTER

☐ ANALYZING ILLUSTRATIONS

☐ MAKING CONNECTIONS

☐ AUTHOR’S PURPOSE 

◼️GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ CONTRACTIONS

☐ VERB TENSE

☐ ELLIPSES

◼️SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ FRIENDSHIP / PEER RELATIONS / MULTIPLE FRIENDS

☐ PROBLEM-SOLVING

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT:

The book, Gustavo, The Shy Ghost, tells the story of a ghost named Gustavo who is lonely and so desperately wants to make friends, but struggles to approach any of the characters in the story because he is very shy. Gustavo gets up the courage to invite the other characters to a violin concert he is hosting in the cemetery and sends out letters to everyone. The days leading up to the big event he is feeling very worried that no one will show up. On the night of the event, no one shows up to the event, but Gustavo decides to play his music anyway. After a short time, the other characters arrive praising him for his talent and apologizing for being late. They had gotten lost on their way. Gustavo gains many friendships from this experience.

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