November is full of great learning: Thanksgiving, turkeys, needs and wants, stone soup, and thankfulness. November also means so many great read-alouds and comprehension lessons! Keep reading for some of our favorite November read-alouds and activities!
Turkey Trouble
Turkey Trouble is a hilarious book that kids love and really connect with. It’s a great text for problem/solution lessons and retelling lessons! We also do a great writing lesson where the students write about what they would wear as a costume and what they would do if they were the turkey on Thanksgiving!
Balloons Over Broadway
Balloons Over Broadway is one of my November must-reads. The book tells the story of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. And when I read it for the first time, I learned so much about the parade and how it came about. I HIGHLY recommend this one! This is an excellent story for predictions, story elements, and even having students design their own balloons for a STEM project.
Students also create their own balloons for our Thanksgiving Day Parade!
We also use our green screen to join in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade!
Stone Soup
Stone Soup is one of my favorite read-alouds because it teaches such a great lesson on teamwork and kindness. It’s a perfect read-aloud for November and Thanksgiving. I also love that there are so many versions that you can read to compare and contrast! And of course, you can make stone soup!
We create this large “soup pot” story map and we will it in for each version that we read!
In our classroom, we celebrate Thanksgiving by making stone soup (vegetable soup). In the spirit of the story, everyone brings in a can of vegetables and we make stone soup. Yes, we include a stone. When we get ready to eat, the soup picks one deserving child to get the stone! This is always a magical moment to see the student discover the stone and be celebrated by their friends!
There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves
Everyone loves the old lady series of books. The books are great for sequencing and rhyming. We use them to discuss real and fantasy and make predictions!
We also use the story to talk about foreshadowing. Before we read the story, we use these shadows to predict what each one might mean. Finally, we put the leaf on the chart and used it to predict what the story will be about.
Thanksgiving Rules
This is a cute book about the rules of Thanksgiving dinner! This was a lesson my student teacher did last year. It was so fun and cute that I had to share it with everyone!
For more Thanksgiving ideas, check out this blog post:
