Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for Jingle Dancer 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 compassion, resiliency and gratitude, this Jingle Dancer picture book by Cynthia Leitich Smith 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 Jingle Dancer Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:
- Read a summary of Jingle Dancer. 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 Jingle Dancer reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.
JINGLE DANCER SUMMARY
Jenna daydreamed at the kitchen table about her grandmother as a Jingle Dancer. She loves and appreciates the tradition of jingle dancing. This has been passed from generations down to her. So, when she finally can do it herself, she goes on a mission to find jingles to help her dress sing.
Jenna visits various people in her life, asking to borrow rows. Eventually, with the help of her grandmother and a pair of moccasins, she collects enough to dance in the powwow!
As Jenna dances, she thinks of all the people who helped her to get to this powwow. She dedicates her dance to them!
JINGLE DANCER 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 Jingle Dancer, 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 Jingle Dancer reading comprehension questions focus on:
- retelling
- visualizing
- analyzing character
LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS
We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:
- compassion
- resiliency
- gratitude
GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY
- verbs
- possessive nouns
- quotation marks
JINGLE DANCER 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 Jingle Dancer?
- Lexile® Measure: N/A
- Guided Reading Level: N/A
- DRA Level: N/A
- Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): N/A
Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?
The book was written by Cynthia Leitich Smith. It was illustrated by Cornelius Van Write and Ying-Hwa Hu.
What genre is Jingle Dancer?
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.
