Why the Sky is Far Away: A Nigerian Folktale Read-Aloud Activities

This picture book companion is a complete supplemental resource for the book Why the Sky is Far Away: A Nigerian Folktale by Mary-Joan Gerson.

With 36 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:⭐️

• Elements of a Folktale Anchor Chart or Notes Handout

• Making Predictions: Before reading the book, students will make predictions about the text.

• Folktale Tidbits: Students will answer questions with details from the story that proves it's a folktale.

• 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.

• Retell the Story: Students retell the beginning, middle, and end of story with text and illustrations.

• 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 story’s problem and solution.

• 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 Actions & Reactions: Students read different situations that the characters faced in the story and fill in the boxes with the character's missing actions & reactions. (ANSWER KEY included).

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

• Character Inside & Out (The Sky): 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 Summary: Students will choose a character from the story to summarize and fill out the graphic organizer.

• Character Perspective: Students will compare the Sky’s perspective to the people’s perspectives by drawing pictures and adding words to the thought bubbles.

• Sketch a Scene From the Story: Students will illustrate one of the events from the story and explain why this event is 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.

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

• 3-2-1: Students will identify three details from the text that help them identify the story as a folktale, describe two reasons the sky was angry, and choose one word that describes Adese the best 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.

• Before & After: Students will draw a picture and describe the relationship between the Sky and the people before the Sky warned them about being greedy and wasteful. Then draw a picture and describe the relationship between the Sky and the people after.

• 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.

• Crossword Puzzle: Students use the definitions and the word bank to fill in the crossword puzzle (ANSWER KEY included).

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

• Thinking About Theme: Students will fill in the stars with answers to the question prompts regarding the theme of the story.

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

Writing a Folktale: Students will plan and write their own folktale or origin story. The following pages are included for this activity:

• Folktale Planning Sheet: Students use the planning sheet to organize their story.

• Folktale Cover: Students design a book cover for their folktale.

• Lined Writing Paper: Three different layouts are included.

• Plot Diagram Graphic Organizers & Anchor Charts: Students can plot out the events of their folktale to organize their thoughts. A variety of graphic organizers for plot are included in order to differentiate for your students.

• Plot Diagram Anchor Charts or Notes for Students

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