Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for Johnny Appleseed 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 kindness, this Johnny Appleseed picture book by Steven Kellogg 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 Johnny Appleseed Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:
- Read a summary of Johnny Appleseed. 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 Johnny Appleseed reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.
JOHNNY APPLESEED SUMMARY
Steven Kellogg’s book Johnny Appleseed, is a tall tale about the life of John Chapman. John grew up near an apple orchard and developed a love for the fruit and the outdoors. Once he was old enough to leave home, Johnny began exploring the wilderness of the west. Along the way, he planted many apple orchards along routes he thought pioneers would travel. He looked forward to sharing his trees with the new settlers.
Throughout his life, Johnny was known for many things. He would never hurt an animal and didn’t carry a gun. Johnny went out of his way to help the new settlers and people loved sitting and listening to him tell stories about his wilderness adventures. Even after Johnny passed, he lived on through the stories people would tell.
JOHNNY APPLESEED 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 Johnny Appleseed, 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 Johnny Appleseed reading comprehension questions focus on:
- analyzing character
- analyzing illustrations
- ask and answer questions
- authors purpose
- making inferences
LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS
We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:
- kindness
GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY
- articles
- compound words
- prefixes
- possessive nouns
JOHNNY APPLESEED 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 Johnny Appleseed?
- Lexile® Measure: 920L
- Guided Reading Level: V
- DRA Level: 44
- Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 6-6.4
Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?
The book was written and ilustrated by Steven Kellogg.
What genre is Johnny Appleseed?
It is a nonfiction 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.
