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Islandborn Activities and Lesson Plans for 2024

Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for Islandborn will love this post. It includes resource recommendations, information about the book, and teaching ideas.

With themes of staying on task, focusing, and active listening, this Islandborn picture book by Junot Díaz is a favorite in 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade classrooms. You and your students will love this book too!

Engage Your Students with Islandborn Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:

  1. Read a summary of Islandborn.
  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 Islandborn reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.

ISLANDBORN SUMMARY

Lola and her classmates were all born somewhere else. Their teacher gives them an assignment to draw a picture of the country they are originally from. Everyone in the class is excited to share stories about where they are from, except Lola. She left the island when she was just a baby so she does not remember it. 


With the help of her teacher, Lola decides to ask her neighbors and families what they remember about the island so she can make her drawing. Lola spends the afternoon talking to people about the island and taking notes. She learned about bats as big as blankets, the delicious mangos, the beaches and even a hurricane. 


When Lola goes down stairs to talk to Mr. Mir, he tells her about something bad that happened on the island. Many years ago a monster arrived and caused problems on the island. That’s why many people had to move away from the island. 


Lola is finally ready to start her drawing, but she ends up creating a whole book of drawings. The next day Lola brings her drawings to school. She explains to her class that although she doesn’t remember the island, it is still part of her.

ISLANDBORN 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 Islandborn, 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 Islandborn reading comprehension questions focus on:

  • making predictions
  • summarize / retell
  • analyzing character 
  • plot | problem – solution
  • sequencing

LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS

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

  • staying on task / focus / active listening

GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY

  • possessive nouns
  • verb tense
  • base words
  • capitalization

ISLANDBORN 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
Islandborn book companion
elementary teacher reading aloud a picture book to her students

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Islandborn Making Words Activity

BOOK INFO FOR ELEMENTARY TEACHERS

What are the reading levels for Islandborn?

  • 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 Junot Díaz. It was illustrated by Leo Espinosa.

What genre is Islandborn?

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 48 pages long.

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