As summer break quickly {but not quickly enough} approaches, it’s important to find engaging and creative ways to enrich and review our reading and writing standards. One of my favorite ways to change things up is with this mini unit which is centered round five summer themed books.
There are three activities incorporated with each book, so you go in-depth with each text. Since the books are used as a mentor text, the reading level of the book isn’t particularly important for this mini unit. For each book there is are comprehension questions, a graphic organizer, writing activity, and a simple art project. We normally don’t have time to squeeze in art, but it’s good to have a little extra fun these last few weeks of school!
There are teacher and student friendly directions for each of the activities. I’ve included a picture of all of the completed art projects. These are all projects that can be completed in one day.
Fireflies
Fireflies! is a great mentor text for inferences and writing memoirs, and it was a sweet summer connection. The book includes content that all students can relate to in some way. In the writing activity, students use an adorable jar template to write a memoir or personal narrative.
In the art project, students use green bottles to create their own firefly, which looks so cute with a glow stick placed inside it! It looks like it could be difficult to make, but it’s really not bad! Of course, if you want to skip it, you can do that too!
Brothers at Bat
After reading Brothers at Bat, students can practice synthesizing with the Baseball Synthesizing graphic organizer. Students can also make character cards (similar to baseball cards) for their top five favorite book characters. The book characters can be from this text or any book.
You can tie in sports related opinion writing with this mentor text. Have students respond to the prompt “Should good grades be required to play sports?” My students definitely had a lot to say! Students also get to create their own baseball cards using various silhouettes.
The Raft
Students are often mesmerized by The Raft , because it has such powerful word choice. You can use the text to allow students to practice asking and answering thick or complex questions. You can also use this book to springboard into RAFT writing, which is unique writing activity. Before writing, students select the role they are writing from, audience for their writing, format of the writing, and topic of their passage. All of the choices are preselected from characters and topics in The Raft.
Bats at the Beach
Bats at the Beach is cute little book that worked well for reviewing comparing and contrasting. I let my students choose what two things they wanted to compare and contrast, as well as the graphic organizer of their choice (Double Bubble, H-chart, or Venn-diagram). Of course you can give more specific requirements to this activity.
You can also use the book to review elements of plot and then have students rewrite a new text titled ____ at the Beach. Students use the mentor text and the graphic organizer to write a story in the same format. As an extension, you have have students compare and contrast each other’s new at the Beach stories.
We also made these cute little kites that were so easy to make! Students traced the included kite shape on a piece of black construction paper. Then students cut out the center of the kite and placed the frame on the sticky side of a piece of contact paper. Students used the black strips of construction paper to create an abstract design on the kite. Then students covered the remainder of the kite with the colored tissue paper squares. When the kite is completely covered, seal with another piece of contact paper. Students should cut out the kite shape and extra strips and contact paper. Staple a piece of yard or ribbon to the bottom of the kite to create a tail.
The Seashore Book
The Seashore Book is packed full of beautiful figurative language, which makes it a great book for practicing visualizing and descriptive writing. This is typically an easier skill/strategy for upper elementary students, but it’s a great transition or graphic organizer for descriptive writing.
As students write, make sure they add figurative language to their writing. Once they finish their writing, they can use the Rainbow Writing for to highlight their examples of figurative language. It’s very powerful to have students look back at their own writing for figurative language examples as it requires reflection and metacognition.
I love the art project incorporated into this activity! Students create a sandcastle picture using sandpaper. I had students cut out the sandpaper in the design of a sandcastle and glue the sandcastle down on construction paper. Students then finished the picture with crayons.
You can find the resources {here}!
