Princess Penelope's Parrot Interactive Read-Aloud Activities

This picture book companion is a complete supplemental resource for the book Princess Penelope's Parrot by Helen Lester.

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:⭐️

• 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.

• 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 Traits: Students choose the most important character traits that describe each of the characters and give one to two examples from the story that support the traits they chose.

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

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

• Character Feelings (Princess Penelope): 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 Feelings (the Parrot): 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 (Princess Penelope): Students select character traits that best describe the character at different times throughout the story and give examples from the book to support the traits they chose.

• Character Development (the parrot): Students select character traits that best describe the character at different times throughout the story and give examples from the book to support the traits they chose.

• Character Change (the Parrot): 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 Response: Students will describe how the characters reacted to the important events in the story.

• Character Perspective: Students will use the illustrations below and what they remember from the story to answer the questions about character viewpoints.

• Character Diary Entry: Students write a diary entry from the point of view of the parrot, Princess Penelope, or Prince Percival, expressing their ideas and feelings about an event in the story, and draw a detailed picture to go with their writing.

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

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

• 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.

• 3-2-1: Students will describe three ways in which Princess Penelope’s actions show that she’s a spoiled brat, identify the two most likely reasons that the parrot wanted to embarrass Princess Penelope in front of the Prince, and come up with one word that best describes Princess Penelope and explain why.

• Before & After: Students will describe and illustrate the parrot’s life before he escaped with Prince Percival and his life 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.

• Sorry, Not Sorry: Students state their opinion on whether Princess Penelope is rude or just very confident. Then, based on their opinion, students will write an apology note or an explanation defending Princess Penelope’s behavior.

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

• Compare & Contrast: Students will compare the books Princess Penelope’s Parrot and All For Me and None For All.

• Lucky Me List: Students make a list of the things they are lucky to have or grateful for. Their list can include clothes, food, pets, people, things, or anything else that they are grateful for in their lives.

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

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