Zora Hurston and the Chinaberry Tree Read Aloud Book Companion Activities

Item description

​This picture book companion is a complete supplemental resource for the book Zora Hurston and the Chinaberry Tree, by William Miller.

With 31 print-and-go reading activities to choose from, this resource is ideal for customizing learning to your student’s specific needs and academic abilities. Students will investigate characters, identify story elements, determine the theme, practice plotting story events, compare & contrast, make predictions, inferences, & connections, answer questions that require them to think beyond the text, and much more!

Students will love the engaging and fun activities, and you will appreciate the time saved hunting for high-level resources to teach reading concepts that students frequently struggle with. The activities provided are designed to enable students to apply higher-level thinking skills, encourage them to provide text evidence to support their thinking, and challenge them to express their own thoughts and/or perspectives.

️Click HERE to save over 30% by buying the BUNDLE, which includes IRA supplemental activities for the following picture books:

• Zora Hurston and the Chinaberry Tree, by William Miller
• Celia Cruz, The Queen of Salsa, by Veronica Chambers
• Manfish: A Story of Jacques Cousteau, by Jennifer Berne
• Snowflake Bentley, by Jacqueline Briggs Martin
• The Pot That Juan Built, by Nancy Andrews-Goebel

This Resource Includes:️

• Making Predictions: Before reading the book, students will make predictions about the text.
• Story Elements: Students fill in the boxes with words & pictures to represent the story elements.
• Making Inferences: Students use clues & schema to make inferences while reading the story.
• Making Connections: Students make connections to events in the story.
• Sketch a Scene From the Story: Students will draw a scene from the story and explain why it’s important to the plot.
• Setting Influences the Plot: Students answer questions about the setting of the story to gain a better understanding of how a story’s setting helps to build the narrative’s mood, plot, and character development.
• Summary: Students complete the Somebody, Wanted, Because, But, So graphic organizer and write a summary of the story.
• Theme: Students answer the questions to determine which theme best fits the story and provide text evidence to support their choice.
• Story Event Sort: Students will describe a scene or event from the story that fits into each of the categories & explain how the event made them feel & how it relates to the category.
• Character Traits #1 – Students choose two important character traits that describe the main character and provide evidence from the text to support their choices.
• Character Traits #2– Students choose 2 different (positive/negative) character traits that describe the main character and provide examples from the text to support the traits they chose.
• Character Inside & Out: Students include details from the story to describe what the character says, thinks, does, and feels.
• Character Feelings: Students describe the character’s feelings throughout the story & give examples.
• Character Development: Students select character traits to describe how the character changed and developed throughout the story and support their thinking with evidence from the text.
• Overcoming Obstacles: Students describe 2 challenges the character faced and how they responded to those challenges. Then, choose a character trait that developed as a result of their experiences.
• Character Change: Students will explain how the character changed from the beginning to the end of the story and describe the events that caused the change to happen.
• Character Acrostic Poem: Students will write an acrostic poem to describe Zora Hurston’s character.
• Character Influence: Students will recognize and understand the different influences that Zora’s mother and father had on her.
• Thinking About the Text: Students will answer the questions about the story & include examples from the text to support their answers.
• Author’s Message: Students describe four important events from Zora’s childhood and put them in chronological order. Then, answer the questions about the author’s message.
• 3-2-1: Students will list three things they learned about the character, 2 challenges they faced, and one word that best describes the character.
• Timeline of Zora Hurston’s Life: Students will fill in the timeline with the information they learned from the text or through research, and illustrate each event.
• Dear Diary: Students will imagine they are Zora Hurston, write a diary entry describing her goals and dreams for the future, and draw a detailed picture to go along with their writing.
• Book Review: Students will color in the stars to rate how much they enjoyed the book and draw a new cover & their favorite character from the story. Then, they will explain why other kids should or should not read it.
• Biography Brochure: Students conduct research to learn more about Zora Hurston’s life and create a brochure.
• Biography One-Pager: Students will research further into the life of Zora Hurston and complete the biography handout.
• Vocabulary Word Search Puzzle: Students will find the hidden words in the puzzle (ANSWER KEY included).
• Investigating Images: Students will respond to the question prompts to help them investigate the photograph.
• 3-Writing Prompts: Students respond to writing prompts with personal opinions, experiences, or evidence from the text to support their thinking.

Need ideas for different ways you can implement these activities?

• Focus on different reading skills each day for targeted instruction, and have students complete a corresponding printable to check for understanding.
• During centers, students can independently read the story again and complete an activity that reviews a previously taught concept.
• Work with students on a reading concept they struggle with during guided reading or strategy groups.
• Students work with a partner or in literature circles to complete additional reading activities.

This resource is for extension read-aloud activities only. The book is not included.

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