The Birthday Swap Interactive Read-Aloud Activities

This read-aloud picture book companion is a complete supplemental resource for the book The Birthday Swap by Loretta Lopez.

With 32 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 illustrations, identify story elements, determine the theme, analyze characters, 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:⭐️

• Judging by the Cover: Students examine the front cover and answer the questions.

• Making Predictions: Before reading, 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.

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

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

• 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.

• Making Connections: Students make connections to an event from the story.

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

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

• Character Inside & Out (Cookie): 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 Development: Students select character traits that best describe the character at different times throughout the story & give examples from the book to support those traits.

• 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 will choose a character from the story to summarize and fill out the graphic organizer.

• Describe the Setting: Students will examine the illustration of the Mexican Mercado from the book from Lori’s perspective using the five senses.

• Sketch a Scene From the Story: Students illustrate one of the events from the story and explain why this event is 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 examples of giving that they noticed in the story, describe two things that they learned about Mexico, and choose one word that best describes Lori and explain why.

• 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.

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

• Vocabulary Crossword 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).

• Word Search: Students find the hidden words from the story in the puzzle.

• Compare & Contrast: Students compare and contrast a Mexican Mercado and a U.S. grocery store using a Venn Diagram.

• Book Review: Students will rate and review the book.

• Party Invitation: Students design an invitation for the surprise birthday party for Lori.

• Thank You Letter: Students imagine they are Lori and write Cookie a letter thanking her for the birthday swap.

• Surprise Party Caught on Social Media: Students create an Instagram post of Lori’s surprise party by drawing a picture, including a caption, name, and location, the number of likes, and a creative hashtag.

• Birthday Bar Graph: Students take a survey to learn the birthday month of each of their classmates. Then, they create a bar graph by coloring in a square for each classmate who has a birthday during that month.

• All About Mexico: Students research to learn more about the country of Mexico.

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