Red: A Crayon's Story activities and lesson plan ideas

Our Red: A Crayon's Story Activities are now digital for distance learning with editable teaching slides and worksheets based on Michael Hall's book. Read aloud the diverse 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

☐ summarize / retell

☐ analyzing illustrations

☐ making connections

☐ author's purpose

☐ ask and answer questions

◼️ SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ friendship

☐ diversity

◼️ GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ adjectives

☐ contractions

☐ types of sentences

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT:

Red is a crayon who has a very hard time drawing red pictures. His label says red, so even though he only draws in blue, everyone in the story tries to get him to draw red pictures. Some people think he needs more practice, and some people think he is just being lazy. No matter how hard he tries though, his red pictures always come out as blue.

One day Red meets Berry. She asks him to draw her an ocean for her boat. When he makes a beautiful ocean, he discovers that he is really blue. Everyone is amazed by the blue pictures that he draws.

Students will learn about identity and diversity as they hear a story about a crayon who was always supposed to be blue.

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