Snow Day (Lester Laminack) activities and lesson plan ideas

Our Snow Day Activities are now digital for distance learning with editable teaching slides and worksheets based on Lester L. Laminack's book. Read aloud the winter 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 character

☐ point of view

☐ making connections

☐ asking and answer questions

☐ cause and effect

☐ author's purpose

◼️ SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ responsibility

◼️ GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ contractions

☐ compound words

☐ adjectives

☐ interjections

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT: 

A father and his two kids hear the weatherman say it’s going to snow. The family gets excited about the possibility of a snow day and begin planning. They can’t wait to build a snow fort, drink hot chocolate, and go sledding. Everyone heads off to bed in anticipation of the big snowstorm and a day at home.

However, when they wake up they are surprised to see no snow outside and children walking down the street with their backpacks on! It didn’t snow after all, and now they are going to be late for school. The family rushes to get ready and into the car. The dad mentions that he cannot be late for school and surprises readers by saying he is the teacher!

Students will love this book about a snow day and learn that teachers like them too!

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