Cactus Hotel Read Aloud Book Companion

This picture book companion is a complete supplemental resource for the book Cactus Hotel by Brenda Z. Guiberson.

With 19 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 elements of narrative nonfiction texts, sequence story events, compare & contrast, make predictions & connections, infer, 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.

⭐️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.

• Sequencing: Students will retell & illustrate the important parts of the story.

• Making Inferences: Students use clues & schema to make inferences while reading the story.

• Making Connections: Students make connections to an event from 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 will draw a scene from the story that takes place in one of the settings and write about what happened there and why it was important to the plot.

• Animals of the Cactus Hotel: Students will list the animals that live in the cactus when it's still alive vs after it dies. Then, they will think about how the cactus & a hotel are similar and explain why the author chose to compare the two.

• Animals Depend on the Cactus: Students will describe how each animal interacts with the cactus and then draw a picture of the animals interacting with the cactus in some way.

• Habitat Homes: Students draw and label a habitat for each critter.

• Thinking About the Text: Students will answer the questions about the story & include examples from the text to support their answers.

• Before & After: Students will draw a before and after picture of the oak tree and explain their illustrations.

• Wait... There's More!: Students write and illustrate two more pages to add to the end of the book.

• Author's Message: Students will describe four important events from the story in chronological order in the boxes on the timeline below. Then answer the questions about the author's message.

• Timeline of the Saguaro Cactus's Life: Students will cut and paste the text and picture cards to complete the timeline (ANSWER KEY INCLUDED).

• Timeline of the Saguaro Cactus's Life (simplified version): Students will cut and paste the text and picture cards to fill in the missing parts of the timeline (ANSWER KEY INCLUDED).

• Trip to the Sonoran Desert: Students pretend they visited the Sonoran Desert and describe what they experienced.

• Saguaro Cactus Bingo Challenge: Students will research to learn more about the Saguaro cactus and complete the boxes with information (ANSWER KEY INCLUDED).

• Text-to-Text Connections: Students will make connections using the books, Cactus Hotel and A Log's Life.

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💡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.