JOHNNY APPLESEED activities and lesson plan ideas

This JOHNNY APPLESEED 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, JOHNNY APPLESEED by Steven Kellogg, 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

☐ ANALYZING CHARACTER

☐ ANALYZING ILLUSTRATIONS

☐ ASKING AND ANSWERING QUESTIONS

☐ AUTHOR'S PURPOSE

☐ MAKING INFERENCES

◼️GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ ARTICLES

☐ COMPOUND WORDS

☐ PREFIXES

☐ POSSESSIVE NOUNS

◼️SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ KINDNESS

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT:

Steven Kellogg’s book Johnny Appleseed, is a tall tale about the life of John Chapman. John grew up near an apple orchard and developed a love for the fruit and the outdoors. Once he was old enough to leave home, Johnny began exploring the wilderness of the west. Along the way, he planted many apple orchards along routes he thought pioneers would travel. He looked forward to sharing his trees with the new settlers.

Throughout his life, Johnny was known for many things. He would never hurt an animal and didn’t carry a gun. Johnny went out of his way to help the new settlers and people loved sitting and listening to him tell stories about his wilderness adventures. Even after Johnny passed, he lived on through the stories people would tell.

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