Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato activities and lesson plan ideas

Our Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato Activities are now digital for distance learning with editable teaching slides and worksheets based on Tomie dePaola'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

☐ summarizing and retelling

☐ analyzing character

☐ plot | problem and solution

☐ cause and effect

◼️ SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ participation

◼️ GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ plural nouns

☐ irregular verbs

☐ contractions

☐ base words

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT:

Jamie O’Rourke is very lazy, especially when it comes to working. His wife Eileen, does all of their planting, weeding and watering. One day, Eileen hurts her back and could not do the planting. Jamie started to worry that they wouldn’t have enough food to eat over the winter. On a late-night walk to church, Jamie caught a leprechaun. Instead of taking the pot of gold, the leprechaun tricked Jamie into wishing for the biggest potato ever. Jamie returned home to plant his potato seed and soon after it grew into a giant potato. The villagers in town were amazed and offered to help Jamie dig up the potato if he explained how he tricked the leprechaun. When the potato rolls away and blocks the road, everyone must take home pieces of the potato to eat all winter. By spring, everyone is tired of potatoes and the villagers do not want Jamie to plant more seeds. They decided to make sure he always has enough food so they never have to see a potato again.

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