Roxaboxen activities and lesson plan ideas

Our Roxaboxen Activities are now digital for distance learning with editable teaching slides and worksheets based on Alice McLearran'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 inferences

☐ visualizing

☐ comparing and contrasting

☐ cause and effect

☐ analyzing setting

☐ author's purpose

◼️ SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ community

◼️ GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ proper nouns

☐ suffixes

☐ adjectives

☐ homophones

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT:

Roxaboxen had always been there, but the children in this book made it into a special place. It started out as an empty part of the desert with old boxes, rocks, and cacti. The children that came to play in Roxaboxen turned it into a town. They used rocks to line the streets and build houses. There was plenty of money because they used pebbles for money. The children could buy whatever they wanted like ice cream, cars, and horses.

This imaginative and heart-warming story tells the memories of the real children that grew up and played in this make-believe community. Even as adults, they look back at Roxaboxen fondly making it an important part of their childhood.

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