One Plastic Bag activities and lesson plan ideas

Our One Plastic Bag Activities are now digital for distance learning with editable teaching slides and worksheets based on Miranda Paul'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

☐ summarize / retell

☐ plot | problem - solution

☐ identifying genre

☐ author's purpose

☐ identifying theme | message | moral

◼️ SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ making good choices

◼️ GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ action verbs

☐ suffixes

☐ prefixes

☐ prepositions

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT:

The book, One Plastic Bag, teaches readers about Isatou Ceesay and the women of Gambia. For a while in the Gambia, people were littering. They would throw plastic bags on the ground and the pile of trash was getting bigger and bigger. Time passed and Isatou grew up. One day, she learned that the goats were eating the plastic bags and dying. She realized she needed to do something. Isatou picked up the bags and she and a group of other women washed them. As Isatou watched her sister crochet, she had an idea. They decided to make the plastic bags into string and crochet bags out of the trash. At first, everyone laughed at the women. But over time, people started to buy their creations. The trash pile started to get smaller and eventually, the Gambia was beautiful and trash-free once more.

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