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Ruby The Copycat Activities and Lesson Plans for 2025

Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for Ruby The Copycat 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 self esteem, this Ruby The Copycat picture book by Peggy Rathmann 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 Ruby The Copycat Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:

  1. Read a summary of Ruby The Copycat. You can find it in the section below.
  2. 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.
  3. Download the book companion to make lesson planning simple with Ruby The Copycat reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.

RUBY THE COPYCAT SUMMARY

Ruby is a new student in Miss Hart’s class. She sits behind Angela, who has a pretty red bow in her hair. Ruby starts to copy Angela, she copies what Angela wears, says and does. Everyday at lunch, Ruby leaves school and comes back wearing something similar to Angela. At first, Angela likes when Ruby copies her but after a while she starts to get mad. Miss Hart talks to Ruby and tells Ruby she should be herself.

When Ruby returns to school, she is wearing red fingernails just like Miss Hart. When Miss Hart shares that she went to the opera over the weekend, Ruby says she went too. Miss Hart encourages Ruby to share something else she did this weekend. Ruby explains to the class that she hopped! She can hop sideways, forward, backward and with her eyes shut. Miss Hart encourages everyone to get up and do the Ruby Hop. For the first time, everyone else is copying Ruby.

RUBY THE COPYCAT 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 Ruby The Copycat, 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 Ruby The Copycat reading comprehension questions focus on:

  • making predictions
  • analyzing character
  • plot (problem-solution)
  • author’s purpose
  • identifying theme, message, and moral
  • analyzing illustrations

LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS

We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:

  • self esteem

GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY

  • plural nouns
  • possessive nouns
  • multiple meaning words
  • adjectives

RUBY THE COPYCAT 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
Ruby the Copycat
teacher reading aloud a picture book to her students

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Ruby the Copycat writing activity

BOOK INFO FOR ELEMENTARY TEACHERS

What are the reading levels for Ruby The Copycat?

  • Lexile® Measure: 500L
  • Guided Reading Level: K
  • DRA Level: 18
  • Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 3.1

Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?

The book was written by Peggy Rathmann. It was illustrated by Peggy Rathmann.

What genre is Ruby The Copycat?

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.

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