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The Year We Learned to Fly Activities and Lesson Plans for 2024

Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for The Year We Learned to Fly 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 Resiliency and Self-regulation, this The Year We Learned to Fly picture book by Jacqueline Woodson 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 Year We Learned to Fly Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:

  1. Read a summary of The Year We Learned to Fly. You can find it in the section below.
  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 Year We Learned to Fly reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.

THE YEAR WE LEARNED TO FLY SUMMARY

On a rainy day, a brother and sister listen to their grandmother’s advice to use their imagination when feeling bored. Their grandmother teaches them to use their creativity to fly away. They fly to different places with beautiful flowers and soft winds. This strategy helps them when they fight, fuss, and when they are bored.

More importantly, we learn that their aunts, uncles, and cousins used this strategy as they were cuffed on ships to America. This skill of flying allows people to be brave and resilient, all with using their brilliant and beautiful minds. When the family moved and others were not accepting of them, they flew. And in time, they lifted others to fly with them as well.

THE YEAR WE LEARNED TO FLY 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 Year We Learned to Fly, 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 Year We Learned to Fly reading comprehension questions focus on:

  • making inferences
  • summarizing/retelling
  • visualizing

LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS

We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:

  • resiliency
  • self-regulation

GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY

  • suffixes
  • verbs
  • pronouns

THE YEAR WE LEARNED TO FLY 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 Year We Learned to Fly book companion
elementary teacher reading aloud a picture book to his students

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The Year We Learned to Fly book and activities

BOOK INFO FOR ELEMENTARY TEACHERS

What are the reading levels for The Year We Learned to Fly?

  • Lexile® Measure: N/A
  • Guided Reading Level: P
  • DRA Level: 38
  • Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 3.9

Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?

The book was written by Jacqueline Woodson. It was illustrated by Rafael López.

What genre is The Year We Learned to Fly?

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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