Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for Swimmy will love this post. It includes tons of helpful information and resource recommendations for teachers.
With themes of leadership and teamwork, this Swimmy picture book by Leo Lionni is a favorite in 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade classrooms. It will be a big hit in your classroom too!
Engage Your Students with Swimmy Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:
- Read a summary of Swimmy.
- 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 Swimmy reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.
SWIMMY SUMMARY
The story Swimmy by Leo Lionni is about a fish named Swimmy. The school of fish that Swimmy lives with gets eaten by a tuna fish at the beginning of the story. Swimmy is able to escape because he is the fastest swimmer. He travels through the sea and runs into many different sea creatures.
Swimmy comes across a group of red fish just like the school of fish that he used to belong to. They are hiding in the shade of rocks and weeds to avoid being eaten by a big fish. Swimmy leads them in forming a great big fish by working together as a team. They are able to scare off the big fish when it comes to eat them.
SWIMMY 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 Swimmy, 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 Swimmy reading comprehension questions focus on:
- visualizing
- summarize/retell
- making connections
- analyzing illustrations
LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS
We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:
- teamwork
- leadership
GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY
- adjectives
- action verbs
- plural nouns
SWIMMY 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 Swimmy?
- Lexile® Measure: 690L
- Guided Reading Level: Q
- DRA Level: 38
- Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 4.1
Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?
The book was written and illustrated by Leo Lionni.
What genre is Swimmy?
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.
