LISTENING WITH MY HEART activities, worksheets & lesson plan ideas

 This LISTENING WITH MY HEART 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, LISTENING WITH MY HEART by Laurie Alber, 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

☐ IDENTIFYING THE MAIN IDEA 

☐ ANALYZING CHARACTER 

☐ SUMMARIZE/RETELL 

☐ AUTHOR’S PURPOSE 

◼️GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ ACTION VERBS

☐ PROPER NOUNS

☐ TYPES OF SENTENCES

◼️SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ KINDNESS

☐ MANAGING STRESS AND ANXIETY

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT:

The story Listening With My Heart is about a girl named Esperanza who finds a heart shaped rock. She tells herself that she is going to use the heart to remind herself to listen with her heart with everything she does. Using the rock, she rescues a kitten and is friendly to Bao when he doesn’t have anyone to play with. 

Esperanza is excited for the school play and is devastated when she falls down and forgets her lines. She hides backstage and discovers the rock has broken. Bao gives Esperanza a picture that says friend, and Esperanza learns that she hasn’t been a friend to herself. 

Esperanza goes home and focuses on her favorite things to help herself feel better and be a friend to herself.

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