The Thing Lou Couldn't Do activities and lesson plan ideas

 Our The Thing Lou Couldn't Do Activities are now digital for distance learning with editable teaching slides and worksheets based on Ashley Spire's book. Read aloud the 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

☐ analyzing character

☐ making connections

☐ plot | problem - solution

☐ identifying the main idea

☐ sequencing

☐ identifying theme | message | moral

◼️ SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ growth mindset

☐ positive self-talk

◼️ GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ suffixes

☐ prefixes

☐ onomatopoeia

☐ adjectives

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT: 

Lou and her friends love playing together: they run fast, build forts, and go on adventures. Lou believes in herself and wants to do exciting things when she grows up like drive cars or dive in the sea. One day, Lou’s friends decide they want to play pirates and a tree can be their pirate ship. Lou has never climbed a tree before and is nervous about being up high. While her friends start to climb the tree, Lou starts to make all kinds of excuses as to why she can’t climb: she needs to walk the cat, she just ate, an asteroid was coming, and that she didn’t feel well. She doesn’t understand what is so great about climbing trees anyway. However, after watching and listening to her friends play, she starts to feel left out. Lou tries to think of other ways to get into the tree but eventually tries to climb. She gives climbing her best try but is not able to get up the tree. Lou realizes that she can’t climb yet, but will try again soon.

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