RULERS OF THE PLAYGROUND activities, worksheets & lesson plan ideas

 This RULERS OF THE PLAYGROUND 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, RULERS OF THE PLAYGROUND by Joseph Kuefler, 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

☐ ANALYZING ILLUSTRATIONS

☐ SUMMARIZE/RETELL

☐ ANALYZING CHARACTER

☐ AUTHOR’S PURPOSE

◼️GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ COMMON AND PROPER NOUNS

☐ PRONOUNS

☐ QUOTATION MARKS

◼️SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ CONFLICT RESOLUTION

☐ APOLOGIZING

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT:

The story Rulers of the Playground is about a boy named Jonah who decides he wants to rule the playground and be king. He claims the slides as his territory and the other kids pinky promise to obey him. Another girl, Lennox, realizes that she also wants to rule the playground and claims the swings as her territory and makes the other kids promise to obey her. 

Now Jonah and Lennox are king and queen and they each want to be in charge of more and more area until the whole playground is taken over and no one wants to play with them. 

Jonah and Lennox decide that it isn’t fun to rule and they apologize to the kids and stop being king and queen. Now everyone can play on the playground together.

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