THE NIGHT BEFORE SUMMER VACATION activities and lesson plan ideas
This THE NIGHT BEFORE SUMMER VACATION 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 NIGHT BEFORE SUMMER VACATION by Natasha Wing, 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
☐ CAUSE AND EFFECT
☐ MAKING CONNECTIONS
☐ RHYME | RHYTHM | REPETITION
☐ SEQUENCING
☐ SUMMARIZING | RETELLING
◼️GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS
☐ PLURAL NOUNS
☐ COMPOUND WORDS
☐ PREPOSITIONS
☐ TIME ORDER WORDS
◼️SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS
☐ TEAMWORK
SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT:
Natasha Wing’s book The Night Before Summer Vacation tells the story of a family preparing for a trip. Everyone is excited on the night before they leave on vacation. The father has made a list of everything they need to bring while the mom packs everything they’ll need for s’mores. The children help bring everything out to the car: helmets, a canoe and oars, a raft and bike. They bring suitcases down from the attic and pack their summer clothes inside.
Once everything is together, the family starts to pack the car. They stuff everything inside the shell on top until it is ready to burst! After packing the family eats dinner ands looks through old scrapbooks of past vacations before heading off to bed. The next morning, everyone wakes up early! The car is packed and they rush out before it bursts! However, as they’re driving down the street the little girl realizes they’ve left the dog at home! The family must turn around to get Pete before driving off again!
This book is a great way to kick off summer vacation!
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