THE BIGGEST SNOWMAN EVER activities and lesson plan ideas

This THE BIGGEST SNOWMAN EVER 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, THE BIGGEST SNOWMAN EVER by Steven Kroll, 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 SETTING

☐ IDENTIFYING THEME | MESSAGE | MORAL

☐ COMPARING AND CONTRASTING

☐ MAKING CONNECTIONS

☐ SEQUENCING

◼️GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ SUFFIXES

☐ TIME ORDER WORDS

☐ PRONOUNS

☐ ARTICLES

◼️SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ TEAMWORK

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT:

The mayor of Mouseville is holding a contest to see who can build the biggest snowman! The mice are excited and get to work right away. Penelope wants to build a princess snowman, James wants to build a martian snowman, and Clayton and Desmond both want to build the biggest snowman ever.

Both Clayton and Desmond get to work on their own snowmen. They build the base, the belly and the head. Each boy gets advice to use a wheelbarrow to carry snow so they can work faster. After a few days, the boys go to look at all the other snowmen and realize they’re all the same size! That’s when they get an idea.

Clayton and Desmond decide they should work together to build the biggest snowmen. The two mice put their snowmen together and create a big snowman! On the day of the contest, the judges decide that Clayton and Desmond have won, they’ve built the biggest snowman and won the prize!

Students will love this story about determined mice who learn that teamwork can you help accomplish big things!

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