Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for The Thing Lou Couldn’t Do 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 growth mindset and positive self-talk, this The Thing Lou Couldn’t Do picture book by Ashley Spires 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 Thing Lou Couldn’t Do Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:
- Read a summary of The Thing Lou Couldn’t Do. 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 Thing Lou Couldn’t Do reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.
THE THING LOU COULDN'T DO SUMMARY
Lou and her friends love playing together: they run fast, build forts, and go on adventures. Lou believes in herself and wants to do exciting things when she grows up like drive cars or dive in the sea.
One day, Lou’s friends decide they want to play pirates and a tree can be their pirate ship. Lou has never climbed a tree before, and is nervous about being up high. While her friends start to climb the tree, Lou starts to make all kinds of excuses as to why she can’t climb: she needs to walk the cat, she just ate, an asteroid was coming, and that she didn’t feel well.
She doesn’t understand what is so great about climbing trees anyway. However, after watching and listening to her friends play, she starts to feel left out. Lou tries to think of other ways to get into the tree, but eventually tries to climb. She gives climbing her best try, but is not able to get up the tree. Lou realizes that she can’t climb yet, but will try again soon.
THE THING LOU COULDN’T DO 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 Thing Lou Couldn’t Do, 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 Thing Lou Couldn’t Do reading comprehension questions focus on:
- making inferences,
- analyzing character
- making connections
- plot | problem – solution
- identifying the main idea
- sequencing
- identifying theme, message and moral
LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS
We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:
- growth mindset
- positive self-talk
GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY
- suffixes
- prefixes
- onomatopoeia
- adjectives
THE THING LOU COULDN’T DO 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 Thing Lou Couldn’t Do?
- Lexile® Measure: AD500L
- Guided Reading Level: N
- DRA Level: 24
- Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 2.7
Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?
The book was written by Ashley Spires. It was illustrated by Ashley Spires.
What genre is The Thing Lou Couldn’t Do?
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.
