Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for How to Catch a Turkey 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 emotions, this How to Catch a Turkey picture book by Adam Wallace 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 How to Catch a Turkey Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:
- Read a summary of How to Catch a Turkey. 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 How to Catch a Turkey reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.
HOW TO CATCH A TURKEY SUMMARY
It’s Thanksgiving Day and the students at school are preparing to put on a play. Turkey is in his pen backstage as students walk by in their costumes, he doesn’t mind being back there. However, when Turkey hears that they plan to have him on stage, everything changes. He is suddenly struck with stage fright and runs away!
Everyone sets off to try and catch turkey. He runs through the science room knocking things over as he goes. An announcement is made to catch the turkey and the chase begins. Students set traps to try and catch him, but have no luck. That’s when the principal decides to get in on the chase.
Eventually Turkey finds himself cornered between the principal and curtains to the stage. He has no choice to run onto the stage. Although he is nervous, Turkey decides to try and have fun with it, and starts to dance! The audience starts to cheer and that’s when Turkey got his start as a mascot.
HOW TO CATCH A TURKEY 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 How to Catch a Turkey, 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 How to Catch a Turkey reading comprehension questions focus on:
- analyzing setting
- cause and effect
- rhyme, rhythm, repetition
- sequencing
- summarizing / retelling
LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS
We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:
- emotions
GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY
- adjectives
- shades of meaning
- punctuation
- pronouns
HOW TO CATCH A TURKEY 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 How to Catch a Turkey?
- Lexile® Measure: 560L
- Guided Reading Level: N
- DRA Level: 28
- Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 3
Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?
The book was written by Adam Wallace. It was illustrated by Andy Elkerton.
What genre is How to Catch a Turkey?
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 40 pages long.
