Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for Cranberry Thanksgiving 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 forgiveness and prejudice, this Cranberry Thanksgiving picture book by Wende Devlin 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 Cranberry Thanksgiving Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:
- Read a summary of Cranberry Thanksgiving. 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 Cranberry Thanksgiving reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.
CRANBERRY THANKSGIVING SUMMARY
Cranberry Thanksgiving tells the story of a young girl named Maggie and her Grandmother. In preparation for Thanksgiving, Grandmother prepares her famous cranberry bread. Her bread is so famous that she must hide the recipe so others can’t use it.
Every Thanksgiving, Maggie and Grandmother each invite someone to dinner. Grandmother chose to invite a well dressed man staying at the local hotel. Maggie decided to invite her friend Mr. Whiskers, who Grandmother is not fond of.
At dinner, Maggie sees that one of the men has found the recipe. Grandmother assumes it is Mr. Whiskers and is shocked to learn it was her guest, Mr. Horace. She is surprised to learned that Mr. Whiskers was actually invited to help keep an eye on Mr. Horace. In the end, Grandmother has a change of heart towards Mr. Whiskers and they enjoy the rest of their Thanksgiving feast.
CRANBERRY THANKSGIVING 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 Cranberry Thanksgiving, 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 Cranberry Thanksgiving reading comprehension questions focus on:
- making connections
- comparing and contrasting
- synthesizing
- analyzing character
- analyzing setting
- plot (problem and solution)
- cause and effect
LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS
We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:
- forgiveness
- prejudice
GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY
- adjectives
- compound words
- homophones
- italics
CRANBERRY THANKSGIVING 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 Cranberry Thanksgiving?
- Lexile® Measure: 650
- Guided Reading Level: P
- DRA Level: 36
- Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 3.7
Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?
The book was written by Wende Devlin. It was illustrated by Harry Devlin.
What genre is Cranberry Thanksgiving?
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.
