Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for Elmer 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 diversity, this Elmer picture book by David Mckee 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 Elmer Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:
- Read a summary of Elmer. 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 Elmer reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.
ELMER SUMMARY
The story Elmer by David McKee is about a colorful elephant. Elmer is not elephant colored, he is patchwork. He always makes the other elephants laugh and smile, but he thinks it is because they are laughing at him.
One day, Elmer slips off into the jungle and finds a berry bush. Elmer shakes the berries to the ground and uses the juice to turn himself elephant colored. When he returns to the herd, the other elephants are not smiling or laughing. Elmer shouts out BOO to surprise them. The elephants start to smile and laugh uncontrollably, and a rain cloud opens up and washes away the berry juice. The other elephants say that they knew it must have been him that shouted BOO because he is so funny. The other elephants declare that every year there will be an Elmer’s Day where the other elephants will decorate themselves and parade and Elmer will wear berry juice.
ELMER 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 Elmer, 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 Elmer reading comprehension questions focus on:
- making predictions
- summarizing and retelling
- point of view
- asking and answering questions
- identifying the main idea
- figurative language
LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS
We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:
- diversity
GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY
- action verbs
- adjectives
- quotation marks
ELMER 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 Elmer?
- Lexile® Measure: AD600L
- Guided Reading Level: O
- DRA Level: 30
- Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 3.3
Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?
The book was written by David Mckee. It was illustrated by David Mckee.
What genre is Elmer?
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.
