Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for Balloons Over Broadway 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 perseverance, grit and problem solving, this Balloons Over Broadway picture book by Melissa Sweet 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 Balloons Over Broadway Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:
- Read a summary of Balloons Over Broadway. You can find it in the section below.
- 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.
- Download the book companion to make lesson planning simple with Balloons Over Broadway reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.
BALLOONS OVER BROADWAY SUMMARY
Balloons Over Broadway tells the true story of Tony Sarg, the original puppeteer of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Even when he was a young child, Tony enjoyed making and creating things. As he grew up, he started to make marionettes when he noticed people were no longer making them for children. He became known for his puppets and Macy’s asked Tony to help with their window displays. They liked his work so much they asked Tony to help them create a parade. Tony worked to design parade floats that everyone on the streets could see and enjoy. His work become so popular that Macy’s decided to have the parade each year, what we now know as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
BALLOONS OVER BROADWAY 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 Balloons Over Broadway, 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 Balloons Over Broadway reading comprehension questions focus on:
- summarizing and retelling
- analyzing character
- analyzing setting
- making connections
- identifying genre
- identifying the main idea
- cause and effect
LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS
We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:
- perserverance
- grit
- problem solving
GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY
- action verbs
- proper nouns
- adjectives
- punctuation
BALLOONS OVER BROADWAY 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
YOU HAVE 2 OPTIONS! WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO PURCHASE THIS BOOK COMPANION?
BOOK INFO FOR ELEMENTARY TEACHERS
What are the reading levels for Balloons Over Broadway?
- Lexile® Measure: AD1000L
- Guided Reading Level: N
- DRA Level: 30
- Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 7.4
Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?
The book was written and illustrated by Melissa Sweet.
What genre is Balloons Over Broadway?
It is a nonfiction 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 40 pages long.
