How to Catch a Leprechaun activities and lesson plan ideas

Our How to Catch a Leprechaun Activities are now digital for distance learning with editable teaching slides and worksheets based on Adam Wallace's book. Read aloud the St. Patrick's Day 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

☐ point of view

☐ analyzing illustrations

☐ making connections

☐ identify the main idea

☐ rhyme, rhythm and repetition

◼️ SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ teasing

◼️ GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ nouns

☐ adjectives

☐ homophones

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT: 

It is almost St. Patrick’s day and a leprechaun is out and about at night. He visits many different homes where children have designed traps in hope of catching a leprechaun. At each house he visits, the leprechaun is able to get away! None of the traps are good enough to catch him. During his visit to some of the houses, the leprechaun takes time to play tricks on the children. He paints a toilet green and puts someone's stinky sneakers in soapy water!

Students will enjoy hearing about this leprechaun’s night out and how he gets away from all of the children’s traps. It might even encourage them to try and make their own traps!

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