Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for The Shark Lady will love this post. It includes information about the book and resource recommendations that will make planning your next read aloud lesson quick and easy!
With a theme of perseverance this Shark Lady picture book by Jess Keating is a favorite in 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade classrooms. Your students are sure to love it!
Engage Your Students with The Shark Lady Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:
- Read a summary of The Shark Lady.
- 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 The Shark Lady reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.
THE SHARK LADY SUMMARY
Jess Keating’s book The Shark Lady is about the life of Eugenie Clark, the woman who is considered to be the ocean’s most fearless scientist.
As a young girl, Eugenie loved everything about the ocean but the sharks were her favorite. At the beach, she loved diving in the water and watching all the fish. She had always thought of sharks as beautiful while others viewed them as ugly and scary.
Eugenie spent her childhood learning as much as she could about sharks. When she grew up, Eugenie decided to study zoology in college. Many people didn’t think women were smart or brave enough to go into science, but that didn’t stop Eugenie. She went on to make many discoveries about fish and sharks.
As she learned more about her favorite animal, Eugenie wanted people to see sharks the way she did: beautiful and smart. She decided to conduct an experiment where she would train sharks. She learned that not only could sharks be trained, they could remember what they learned for two months.
Eugenie Clark was a brave scientist that changed the way people preserve sharks, and women in the field of science.
THE SHARK LADY 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 The Shark Lady, 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 The Shark Lady reading comprehension questions focus on:
- summarize / retell
- analyzing character
- ask and answer questions
- identifying genre
- author’s purpose
LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS
We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:
- perseverance
GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY
- proper nouns
- verb tense
- adjectives
- antonyms
THE SHARK LADY 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 The Shark Lady?
- Lexile® Measure: 730L
- Guided Reading Level: N
- DRA Level: 28 – 30
- Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 4.3
Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?
The book was written by Jess Keating. It was illustrated by Marta Álvarez Miguéns.
What genre is The Shark Lady?
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.
