Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for Tough Cookie will love this post. It includes resource recommendations, teaching ideas, and information about the book.
With themes of friendship and identity, this Tough Cookie picture book by Edward Hemingway is a favorite in 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade classrooms. You and your students will love it too!
Engage Your Students with Tough Cookie Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:
- Read a summary of Tough Cookie.
- 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 Tough Cookie reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.
TOUGH COOKIE SUMMARY
As Fox visits Christmastown, a cookie runs out of the bakery announcing he is fast and ready to be devoured! Once Fox catches him, they realize that Cookie is not as sweet as he thought.
They try many ways to make him more sweet, and Cookie grows more and more frustrated. Eventually, ornaments see Cookie and share that he is one of them. His ingredients are different! Cookie is thrilled to realize his proper place and hangs from the tree in the middle of his town.
TOUGH COOKIE 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 Tough Cookie, 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 Tough Cookie reading comprehension questions focus on:
- retell
- analyze character
- make connections
LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS
We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:
- friendship
- identity
GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY
- ellipses
- homonyms
- speech bubbles
TOUGH COOKIE 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 Tough Cookie?
- Lexile® Measure: AD550L
- Guided Reading Level: L
- DRA Level: 20 – 24
- Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 2.5
Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?
The book was written and illustrated by Edward Hemingway.
What genre is Tough Cookie?
It is a fairy tales, folk tales, or fables 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.
