Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for Neck & Neck 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 making good choices and feelings, this Neck & Neck picture book by Elise Parsley 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 Neck & Neck Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:
- Read a summary of Neck & Neck. 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 Neck & Neck reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.
NECK & NECK SUMMARY
Leopold the giraffe is a popular attraction at the zoo. Children squeal over how tall his neck is and Leopold loves the admiration. One day, Leopold finds he has some competition at the zoo, a giraffe balloon!
A little boy is holding the balloon, and thinks it is better than the real thing. Leopold is jealous and tries to compete. He can grin, zoom and bounce just like the giraffe but the balloon is still competition.
Leopold tries to solve his problem by popping it, only to find the boy returns with even more balloons!
The boy accidentally lets go of the balloons and they drift up into Leopold’s favorite tree. He must decide whether or not to save them. When he does, Leopold finally gets the boy’s admiration and all is well again at the zoo.
NECK & NECK 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 Neck & Neck, 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 Neck & Neck reading comprehension questions focus on:
- making inferences
- making predictions
- cause and effect
- plot (problem-solution)
- ask and answer questions
- making connections
LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS
We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:
- making good choices
- feelings
GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY
- prepositions
- action verbs
- interjections
- suffixes
- adjectives
NECK & NECK 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 Neck & Neck?
- Lexile® Measure: AD530L
- Guided Reading Level: N
- DRA Level: 28
- Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 2.9-3
Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?
The book was written by Elise Parsley. It was illustrated by Elise Parsley.
What genre is Neck & Neck?
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.
