JUST HELP! activities and lesson plan ideas
Save yourself time and engage your students with these Just Help! activities. This jam-packed book companion is quick and easy to use - Just print and go!
Read on to learn more about all that is included in this standards-based interactive read aloud packet based on the children’s book, Just Help! by Sonia Sotomayor and Angela Dominguez.
TO SAVE YOU TIME, WE'VE DONE ALL OF THE WORK FOR YOU!
- We chose vocabulary words & kid-friendly definitions.
- We selected mentor sentences & specific grammar skills for each.
- We wrote 30 book-based writing prompts (that cover 10 genres of writing).
- We identified an SEL focus / character education topic based on events in the story.
- We constructed strategy-based reading comprehension questions and created no-prep, print-and-go reader response worksheets.
YOU ONLY NEED TO DO 3 QUICK & EASY STEPS:
STEP 1: PLAN
Simply customize your Just Help! lesson plans using the ideas in the teaching guide and choose from the 15 standards-based activities.
STEP 2: PREP
Prep can be as simple as printing the activity pages (or assigning the included digital version) and finding a free video of the book being read aloud online.
OPTIONAL: If you want to dive deeper into a book study, you’ll find our teaching ideas and slides make it easy to create mini-lessons, anchor charts, and slideshows.
STEP 3: TEACH
Engage your students with an interactive read aloud by reading or streaming the picture book. Practice reading comprehension strategies with text-based discussion questions. We even wrote the Just Help! comprehension questions for you!
Some teachers like to assemble and assign independent work packets. Others prefer to dive deeper into the story with vocabulary, grammar, SEL, and writing lessons that can span over several days.
The best thing about our 500+ book companions is the flexibility they provide you. We’ve packed them with a variety of teaching ideas and activities so you have the option to use them in the way that works best for you and your students!
THE JUST HELP! BOOK COMPANION FOCUSES ON:
◼️READING SKILLS
☐ AUTHOR’S PURPOSE
☐ CAUSE AND EFFECT
☐ IDENTIFYING THEME | MESSAGE | MORAL
☐ MAKING CONNECTIONS
☐ MAKING PREDICTIONS
◼️GRAMMAR
☐ PLURAL NOUNS
☐ POSSESSIVE NOUNS
☐ SUFFIXES
☐ QUOTATION MARKS
◼️SEL
☐ KINDNESS
JUST HELP! SUMMARY
Sonia Sotomayor’s book, Just Help!, is a story about children making their community a better place. Readers will be encouraged to find the small, simple ways they can help others each day.
Each morning, Sonia’s mother asks her what she will do to help that day. Sonia looks up to her mother who is a nurse at the hospital. At school that day, Sonia and her friends were making care packages for soldiers fighting overseas. Everyone brought in items to add to the care packages. Later, she and her friends work together to clean up the park. Each small act of kindness inspired someone else to help in a different way. Brooklyn started a recycling program at school, Jasper donated toys to patients at the children’s hospital, and Maya gave a sweater away to her friend.
At the end of the day, Sonia’s mother asks her what she did to help that day. Sonia thinks back on all the things she and her friends did to help their community. But she also reflects on all of the people that helped her and their community. Sonia Sotomayor’s book is sure to get children inspired to help!
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