Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for The Night Tree 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 kindness, this The Night Tree picture book by Eve Bunting 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 Night Tree Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:
- Read a summary of The Night Tree. 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 Night Tree reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.
THE NIGHT TREE SUMMARY
In the story Night Tree by Eve Bunting, a family sets out into the forest on Christmas Eve. They have a box and lantern with them as they make their way through the dark, cold forest. Eventually, they arrive at a tree and realize it has grown since last year. The two children begin decorating the tree with popcorn string, fruits and seeds they have made. Once the tree has been decorated, the family sits down on a blanket and warms up with hot chocolate as they admire the tree. They’ve decorated the tree in hopes that animals will come and eat off of it.
Students will love hearing about this family’s unique Christmas Eve tradition!
THE NIGHT TREE LESSON PLAN IDEAS
Each of our 600+ 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 Night Tree, 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 Night Tree reading comprehension questions focus on:
- making inferences
- making predictions
- summarize/retell
- analyzing setting
- point of view
- making connections
- sequencing
LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS
We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:
- kindness
GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY
- adjectives
- common and proper nouns
- prepositions
- homophones
THE NIGHT TREE 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 Night Tree?
- Lexile® Measure: AD620L
- Guided Reading Level: K
- DRA Level: 18
- Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 3.3
Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?
The book was written and illustrated by Eve Bunting.
What genre is The Night Tree?
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.
