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The Rainbow Fish Activities and Lesson Plans for 2025

Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for The Rainbow Fish will love this post. It includes information about the book that will be helpful as you plan your next read aloud lesson. It also includes resource recommendations that will make planning and prep quick and easy.

With themes of sharing and friendship, this The Rainbow Fish picture book by Marcus Pfister is a favorite in 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade classrooms. Your students will love it!

Engage Your Students with The Rainbow Fish Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:

  1. Read a summary of The Rainbow Fish.
  2. 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.
  3. Download the book companion to make lesson planning simple with The Rainbow Fish reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.

THE RAINBOW FISH SUMMARY

Rainbow Fish was unlike any of the other fish in the sea. He had sparkling, shimmering scales all over. The other fish were amazed by his beauty and always wanted Rainbow Fish to play with them.

 

One day, a little blue fish asked Rainbow Fish for one of his scales. Rainbow Fish was shocked! How could someone expect him to give up one of his beautiful scales? He was rude to the little fish, who swam away and told all his friends. After hearing about how Rainbow Fish treated the other fish, no one asked Rainbow Fish to play anymore. He found himself feeling very lonely. 

 

Rainbow Fish went to see the octopus for advice. She told him that he should start giving the other fish some of his scales and that is how he would learn to be happy. Rainbow Fish was unsure at first. When he saw the little blue fish again, he decided to give away one small scale. The little fish was so happy, and so was Rainbow Fish. He decided to give away more scales to the other fish and was filled with so much joy. Everyone was so happy to have a shimmery scale and again everyone wanted to play with Rainbow Fish.

THE RAINBOW FISH 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 Rainbow Fish, 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 Rainbow Fish reading comprehension questions focus on:

  • summarize / retell
  • analyzing character
  • 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:

  • sharing
  • friendship

GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY

  • base words 
  • adjectives 
  • adverbs 
  • synonyms

THE RAINBOW FISH 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
The Rainbow Fish book companion
elementary students listening to a picture book being read aloud by their teacher

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BOOK INFO FOR ELEMENTARY TEACHERS

What are the reading levels for The Rainbow Fish?

  • Lexile® Measure: 640L
  • Guided Reading Level: M
  • DRA Level: 20 – 24
  • Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 3.6

Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?

The book was written and illustrated by Marcus Pfister.

What genre is The Rainbow Fish?

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.

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