Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for Ordinary Mary’s Extraordinary Deed 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 Ordinary Mary’s Extraordinary Deed picture book by Emily Pearson 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 Ordinary Mary’s Extraordinary Deed Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:
- Read a summary of Ordinary Mary’s Extraordinary Deed. 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 Ordinary Mary’s Extraordinary Deed reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.
ORDINARY MARY'S EXTRAORDINARY DEED SUMMARY
One day, an ordinary girl name Mary walked by a bush filled with blueberries. She decided to pick them and leave a bowl full of berries on her neighbor Mrs. Bishop’s porch. This act of kindness inspired Mrs. Bishop to make blueberry muffins and give a basket to five people she thought could have left the berries. Each of those people, felt so good about receiving the muffins that they wanted to do something kind for someone else. This set off a chain reaction of random acts of kindness. Each person that received an act of kindness did something kind for five others in return.
Soon, kindness and love spread throughout the whole world and made its way back to Mary. Her aunt, who had been treated with kindness, surprised Mary with a necklace. Everyone was thankful that one ordinary girl was able to change the world.
ORDINARY MARY’S EXTRAORDINARY Deed 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 Ordinary Mary’s Extraordinary Deed, 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 Ordinary Mary’s Extraordinary Deed reading comprehension questions focus on:
- making predictions
- summarize/retell
- cause and effect
- author’s purpose
- identifying theme, message, and moral
LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS
We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:
- kindness
GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY
- proper nouns
- suffixes
- multiple meaning words
- shades of meaning
ORDINARY MARY’S EXTRAORDINARY DEED 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 Ordinary Mary’s Extraordinary Deed?
- Lexile® Measure: AD950L
- 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 Emily Pearson. It was illustrated by Fumi Kosaka.
What genre is Ordinary Mary’s Extraordinary Deed?
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.
