April Read Alouds for First Grade

 I can't believe it's already April!  Spring is flying by!  I love teaching during this season, because there are so many fun themes and topics to cover.  It's the perfect time to incorporate animals, weather, and plants into your interactive read aloud.  Our interactive read aloud lessons this month cover the literature and informational text standards, RL 1.2 (retell stories), RL 1.3 (describing characters, setting, and major events using key details, RL 1.6 (identify who is telling the story at different points), and RL 1.4 (identifying words or phrases that suggest feelings). 

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April Read Aloud Books

Country Frog, City Dog by Mo Willems
Hey, Little Ant by Hannah and Phillip Hoose
The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba

City Dog, Country Frog

City Dog, Country Frog is a sweet story about friendship.  Not only is it precious, it's also extremely sad.  The reader has to draw conclusions at the end of the story when Country Frog does not return in the spring.  

I use the story to focus on the describing characters.  We use the actions of the characters to infer their character traits.  You can see that I include scripted lessons plans for the five day unit, along with text-dependent questions printed on sticky notes for easy access during your read aloud.

These two tasks give students practice inferring character traits.  We do the Country Frog project together, and by the end of the week, they are ready to complete the City Dog culminating task.

On day five, students complete a comprehension assessment over the story for an additional grade.  We also do a mentor sentence throughout the week related to our story and the language standards we have already covered.

Hey, Little Ant

Hey, Little Ant is the perfect story for teaching point of view.  The point of view alternates on each page between a little ant and a kid.  It allows the reader to also view a situation from two different points of view.  I use the anchor chart above for recording who is telling the story and the evidence to prove my thinking.  I always include anchor charts in the pack that you can print as a poster on your own printer and laminate for future use.  It makes it so much easier than drawing out anchor charts each week.

At the beginning of the week, we use our schema to explain what we already know about ants.  After reading, Students then have to describe how the ant feels and what evidence supports their thinking.  For two of the next tasks, students have to identify who is telling the story and include text evidence to prove their thinking.  Thursdays task helps lead to the culminating task; students have to provide reasons to save the ant and reasons to squish the ant.

On Friday, students will write an ending to the story, because the author leaves the ending up to the reader.  They have to use their own point of view to decide what should happen to the ant.  I love that this story teaches students about empathy for others.  We don't always know why others do what they do, and this can give a different spin on why the ants are taking the food from the picnic.

The Tiny Seed

I use the Tiny Seed for retell of a story.  It's also a great book for integrating those science standards.  

The tasks on Monday through Wednesday include text dependent questions that students have to answer.  I always have them draw an illustration to go along with their writing.  

For the culminating task for the week, I divide students into groups.  Each group member is given a season.  The group works together to retell the story using words and illustrations.  On Friday, they present their retell as a group to the class.  I also interview students individually for an oral retell of the whole story.  I have included grading rubrics for both.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

If you are not familiar with this story, I encourage you to watch the movie on Netflix.  It's such an inspiring story!  The author of the story wrote a book about his experience growing up in Malawi.  He ends up creating a windmill to bring his village electricity and water.  This is a great story about perseverance and engineering.  He taught himself how to build the windmill using things he found lying around his village.

The story contains several phrases that suggest feeling.  This was the perfect book for that standard!  We created a lap book that week, in which students had to explain in their own words the meaning of those phrases that expressed feeling.

We did not take a comprehension test for this story.  I used the lap book as their grade for the week.  I included the grading rubric that I used.

I also included the slides I use in the classroom.  I have adapted them in Google Slides TM so that you can assign the tasks and assessments to distance learners.  These slides guide my lessons each day, and ensure that I have included all necessary parts of my instruction.  You can purchase the printable and digital bundle or the digital only bundle.  Thank you so much for stopping by and reading about our April interactive read alouds!