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A Bad Case of Tattle Tongue Activities and Lesson Plans for 2025

Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for A Bad Case of Tattle Tongue will find this post helpful. It includes resource recommendations, free teaching ideas, and information about the book. You’ll have everything you need to deliver engaging interactive read aloud lessons based on this story.

With themes of bullying vs teasing and problem solving, this A Bad Case of Tattle Tongue picture book by Anita Cook is a favorite in 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade classrooms. It will be a big hit in your classroom too! Learn more about this book below!

Engage Your Students with A Bad Case of Tattle Tongue Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:

  1. Read a summary of A Bad Case of Tattle Tongue. You can find it in the section below.
  2. Check out the teaching ideas for reading comprehension strategies, grammar topics and social emotional learning skills that can be taught using this children’s book.
  3. Download the book companion to make lesson planning simple with A Bad Case of Tattle Tongue reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.

A BAD CASE OF TATTLE TONGUE SUMMARY

Joshua is constantly tattling, even when he is not involved in a situation. His tattling has become so bad his classmates and friends don’t want to play with him at recess or sit with him at lunch. Joshua’s mother says if he keeps tattling, he will get tattle tongue. That’s when your tongue turns yellow with purple spots and grows so long it doesn’t fit in your mouth! Fearing he will get Tattle Tongue, Joshua doesn’t tell an adult when Billy the Bully is going to beat up Edith.

 

That night, Joshua is visited by the Tattle Prince. Joshua learns that he should have told someone about Billy because Edith was in danger. Tattling is when there is a problem you can solve on your own or the problem is none of your business. The Tattle Prince teaches Joshua the rules of tattling. The next day at school, Joshua does not tattle on his classmates and his friend wants to eat with him again!

A BAD CASE OF TATTLE TONGUE LESSON PLAN IDEAS

Each of our 400+ Starts With a Story book companions come with a teacher’s guide to make lesson planning quick and easy, printable worksheets and digital resources that cover ALL of the standards-based reading comprehension skills.

When it comes to writing lesson plans and finding activities for A Bad Case of Tattle Tongue, we’ve already done all of the heavy lifting for you.

We found this book was especially good at teaching the topics listed below.

READING COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS

The text-based A Bad Case of Tattle Tongue reading comprehension questions focus on:

  • making predictions
  • summarize / retell
  • plot | problem – solution
  • identify the main idea
  • author’s purpose

LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS

We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:

  • bullying vs teasing
  • problem solving

GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY

  • pronouns
  • types of sentences
  • adjectives
  • prepositions

A BAD CASE OF TATTLE TONGUE ACTIVITIES

You’ll receive all of the following resources aligned to the story:

  • comprehension questions
  • 30 writing prompts with themed paper
  • vocabulary activities
  • word study print & go activities
  • ideas for grammar lessons with focus sentence printables
  • social emotional learning discussion topics
  • graphic organizers to target specific comprehension skills and strategies
A Bad Case of Tattle Tongue book companion
elementary teacher calling on her student to answer a question

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A Bad Case of Tattle Tongue activity

BOOK INFO FOR ELEMENTARY TEACHERS

What are the reading levels for A Bad Case of Tattle Tongue?

  • Lexile® Measure: 675
  • Guided Reading Level: P
  • DRA Level: 38
  • Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 3.9

Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?

The book was written by Julia Cook. It was illustrated by Anita DuFalla.

What genre is A Bad Case of Tattle Tongue?

It is a fiction book. You may want to check out our genre activities or read our blog post, How to Teach Genre to Elementary Students.

How many pages are in the book?

The story is 32 pages long.

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