TOO MANY TAMALES activities and lesson plan ideas

This TOO MANY TAMALES 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, TOO MANY TAMALES by Gary Soto, 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

☐ SUMMARIZE / RETELL

☐ ANALYZING CHARACTER

☐ ANALYZING SETTING

☐ MAKING CONNECTIONS

☐ PLOT | PROBLEM - SOLUTION

◼️GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONCEPTS

☐ ACTION VERBS

☐ ADVERBS

☐ ANTONYMS

☐ PUNCTUATION

◼️SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TOPICS

☐ TAKING OWNERSHIP

SUMMARY OF THE MENTOR TEXT:

It’s Christmas and Maria is helping her mother make tamales. She feels very grown-up wearing her mother’s apron, perfume and lipstick. Maria admires her mother’s diamond ring sitting on the counter. When her mother leaves the room to get the phone, Maria decides to try the ring on. She watches it shine as she kneads the dough for the tamales.

Maria and her parents finish making the tamales and the family arrives. The children go upstairs to play. While Maria and her cousins clip pictures of toys in the newspaper, a picture of a necklace reminds Maria of the ring. She realizes it is not on her hand anymore! She runs downstairs and realizes it must be inside one of the tamales.

Maria and her cousins start eating the tamales, hoping to find the ring. When they’ve eaten the last one without finding the ring, they realize someone must have swallowed the ring. Maria must confess to her mother.

As Maria is talking to her mother, she realizes the ring is on her finger! It wasn’t missing after all. Maria is still upset that she almost lost the ring but her aunt tries to comfort her. The family works together in the kitchen to make a second batch of tamales. Maria feels better when Aunt Rosa jokes that the second batch is always better.

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