Just Ask activities and lesson plan ideas

Our Just Ask! Activities are now digital for distance learning with editable teaching slides and worksheets based on Sonia Sotomayor'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

☐ summarizing and retelling

☐ point of view

☐ making connections

☐ identifying the main idea

☐ author's purpose

☐ identifying theme, message or moral

◼️ SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ diversity

☐ advocation

◼️ GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ plural nouns

☐ helping verbs

☐ types of sentences

☐ antonyms

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT: 

Just Ask! Is written by Sonia Sotomayor, an associate justice of the Supreme Court. The book starts off with Sonia narrating and explaining that she and her friends are building a garden. Just like things in the garden are different, her friends are too. Sonia encourages readers to ask questions when they are curious about someone.

Throughout the book, readers are introduced to the children that are working in the garden. Each one is diverse and explains what makes them unique. There are blind and deaf children, some have medical conditions like allergies or diabetes, and some have conditions like Autism, Down syndrome, or Tourette’s.

Sonia celebrates the differences of all the children and sends a message that it is okay to ask questions when you don’t understand something.

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