Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for The Circus Ship will love this post. It includes resource recommendations, information about the book, and teaching ideas for teachers.
With themes of bravery and compassion, this The Circus Ship picture book by Chris Van Dusen is a favorite in 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade classrooms. You and your students will love it too!
Engage Your Students with The Circus Ship Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:
- Read a summary of The Circus Ship.
- 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 Circus Ship reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.
THE CIRCUS SHIP SUMMARY
Off the coast of Maine floated a circus ship with a greedy boss. When the boat began to crash, he told the captain to save him, not the animals.
The animals float to shore and frolic through the town, raising chaos. That is, until there was a fire and the tiger remembered how he used to jump through rings. He went into the building and saved the family.
From that moment, the townspeople appreciated the animals. A messenger came running, saying the greedy boss was there to collect his animals. Quickly, the people disguised the animals so the ringleader could not take them. The animals and people lived happily together in the little town of Maine from then on.
THE CIRCUS SHIP 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 Circus Ship, 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 Circus Ship reading comprehension questions focus on:
- retell
- analyze illustrations
- author’s purpose
- figurative language
LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS
We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:
- bravery
- compassion
GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY
- quotation marks
- punctuation
- verbs
THE CIRCUS SHIP 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 Circus Ship?
- Lexile® Measure: AD600L
- Guided Reading Level: O
- DRA Level: 30
- Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 3.3
Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?
The book was written and illustrated by Chris Van Dusen.
What genre is The Circus Ship?
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.
