Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for Planting Stories: The Life of Librarian and Storyteller Pura Belpré 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 diversity and goal setting, this Planting Stories: The Life of Librarian and Storyteller Pura Belpré picture book by Anika Aldamuy Denise 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 Planting Stories: The Life of Librarian and Storyteller Pura Belpré Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:
- Read a summary of Planting Stories: The Life of Librarian and Storyteller Pura Belpré. 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 to make lesson planning simple with Planting Stories: The Life of Librarian and Storyteller Pura Belpré reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.
PLANTING STORIES SUMMARY
Pura Belpre was the first Puerto Rican Librarian in New York City. When she started working at the library, she realized that there weren’t any of the stories and folktales that she was familiar with in Puerto Rico. She decides to share her stories during story hour and through puppet shows, and eventually publishes a book.
Pura travels across the country and from classroom to classroom planting her story seeds and educating about her homeland. When she returns to the library, she sees that her story seeds have bloomed and everyone is telling her stories.
Students will love learning about Pura and how she shared her stories with children everywhere.
PLANTING STORIES 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 Planting Stories: The Life of Librarian and Storyteller Pura Belpré, 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 Planting Stories: The Life of Librarian and Storyteller Pura Belpré reading comprehension questions focus on:
- summarize / retell
- analyzing character
- ask and answer questions
- identifying genre
- author’s purpose
- figurative language
LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS
We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:
- diversity
- goal setting
GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY
- proper nouns
- plural nouns
- suffixes
PLANTING STORIES 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
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BOOK INFO FOR ELEMENTARY TEACHERS
What are the reading levels for Planting Stories: The Life of Librarian and Storyteller Pura Belpré?
- Lexile® Measure: 860L
- Guided Reading Level: T-U
- DRA Level: 44
- Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 5.5 – 5.8
Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?
The book was written by Anika Aldamuy Denise. It was illustrated by Paola Escobar.
What genre is Planting Stories: The Life of Librarian and Storyteller Pura Belpré?
It is a biography 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.
