Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for The Cool Bean 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 feelings and self-esteem, this The Cool Bean picture book by Jory John 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 The Cool Bean Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:
- Read a summary of The Cool Bean. 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 companion to make lesson planning simple with The Cool Bean reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.
THE COOL BEAN SUMMARY
Jory John’s book, The Cool Bean, tells the story of a group of beans. The main character is a clumsy bean that is picked last for everything. He admires a group of cool beans, these beans walk with swagger and dress with style. The main character used to be friends with the cool beans last year, but they have grown apart. He misses hanging out with his friends and thinks that their coolness has gotten in the way. This bean thinks he can never be cool.
One day, he drops his tray in the lunchroom. Without saying anything, one of the cool beans comes over and helps him clean it up. Later, when he fell on the playground, one of the cool beans cleans up his cut. These small gestures of kindness boost the beans confidence and he starts hanging out with the cool beans again.
He learns that the beans’ acts of kindness are what make them cool, rather than how they look.
THE COOL BEAN 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 Cool Bean, 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 Cool Bean reading comprehension questions focus on:
- making predictions
- comparing and contrasting
- point of view
- making connections
- author’s purpose
- identifying theme | message | moral
LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS
We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:
- feelings
- self-esteem
GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY
- prepositions
- interjections
- ellipses
- synonyms
THE COOL BEAN 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 Cool Bean?
- Lexile® Measure: AD530L
- Guided Reading Level: N
- DRA Level: 28
- Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 2.9 – 3
Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?
The book was written by Jory John. It was illustrated by Pete Oswald.
What genre is The Cool Bean?
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.
