The Night Tree activities and lesson plan ideas

Our The Night Tree Activities are now digital for distance learning with editable teaching slides and worksheets based on Eve Bunting's book. Read aloud the Christmas 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

☐ making predictions

☐ summarize / retell

☐ analyzing setting

☐ point of view

☐ making connections

☐ sequencing

◼️ SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ kindness

◼️ GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ adjectives

☐ common and proper nouns

☐ prepositions

☐ homophones

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT:

In the story Night Tree by Eve Bunting, a family sets out into the forest on Christmas Eve. They have a box and lantern with them as they make their way through the dark, cold forest. Eventually, they arrive at a tree and realize it has grown since last year. The two children begin decorating the tree with popcorn string, fruits and seeds they have made. Once the tree has been decorated, the family sits down on a blanket and warms up with hot chocolate as they admire the tree. They’ve decorated the tree in hopes that animals will come and eat off of it.

Students will love hearing about this family's unique Christmas Eve tradition!

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