Tacky the Penguin Interactive Read-Aloud Activities

This picture book companion is a complete supplemental resource for the book Tacky the Penguin by Helen Lester.

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, sequence 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.

⭐️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.

• Summary: Students complete the Somebody, Wanted, Because, But, So graphic organizer and write a summary of the story.

• Recalling events in Chronological Order: Students describe and illustrate four major events in the story in chronological order.

• 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.

• Problem & Solution: Students will answer questions related to the problem & solution in the story.

• Problem & Solution: Students will identify four minor problems and solutions in 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.

• Character Inside & Out: Students include details from the story to describe what the character says, thinks, does, and feels.

• Character Feelings: Students describe how the character's feelings change throughout the story & give examples of the events that cause them to feel the way they do.

• Character Traits: Students choose 2 important character traits that describe the main character and provide evidence from the text to support their choices.

• 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 Summary: Students summarize the main character of the story.

• Character Acrostic Poem: Students will write an acrostic poem to describe Tacky's character.

• Sketch a Scene From the Story: Students will draw a scene from the story & explain why it's important.

• 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.

• Setting the Scene: Students identify three different settings in the story and explain how they know the setting changed.

• 3-2-1: Students will list three ways that Tacky is different or odd, 2 things that Tacky did to scare off the hunters, and one word that describes Tacky's character.

• Author's Message: Students describe four important events from the story and put them in chronological order. Then, answer the questions about the author's message.

• Theme: Students answer the questions to determine which theme best fits the story and provide text evidence to support their choice.

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

• My Penguin Name: Students choose a penguin name for themselves and describe how the name matches their unique characteristics. They can also color & decorate the penguin at the bottom to reflect their personalities.

• Dare to Be Different: Students respond to questions about being different.

• Before & After: Students will describe and illustrate what the penguins thought about Tacky before he got rid of the hunters and what they thought of him after he scared the hunters away.

• Wait... There's More!: Students will write about what happens next in the story.

• 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.

• Crossword Puzzle: Students use the clues & word bank to fill in the puzzle (ANSWER KEY INCLUDED).

• Word Search Puzzle: Students use the clues to fill in the puzzle. Words can go across or down. Letters are shared when the words intersect (ANSWER KEY INCLUDED).

• Compare & Contrast: Students will compare the books Tacky the Penguin and Three Cheers for Tacky.

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