Book of the Week: A Bad Case of The Stripes

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A Bad Case of Stripes

by: David Shannon

Scholastic: 2004

Paperback, 32 pages

Read by Sean Astin onYouTube

This fabulous story is a great pick for a multi-day lesson. It is jam packed with opportunities to practice language skills in a functional way. The best news is that all of the things I wanted to do with this book were already created for us by some talented and creative folks! I've compiled some links to my favorites as well as some resources I've created for the following topics:

• Determining cause and effect:
• A great open-the-flap freebie activity idea and template from Primarily Speaking
• A list of lots of cause/effect questions based on the text courtesy of The Picture Book Teacher's Edition
• Craftivity from Step Into Second Grade
• Name That Cause! Matching worksheet from webteaching.com
• Worksheet (source unknown, from Wikispaces)
• Making predictions
• Vocabulary (CAFE menu) 
• A lesson plan designed  by Ms. Naddeo for making predictions, in addition to inferring emotions and cause/effect
• Comprehending figurative language (similes)
• A great "clinician page" from Speak Out! with moral development, adjective identification, character description, summarizing, and inferencing in addition to figurative language 
• Understanding tricky vocabulary using context clues
• Vocabulary targets by grade for popular children's books
• Word exchange with passage
• Vocabulary (CAFE menu) 
• Classroom Magic Powerpoint and lesson idea
• Some good ideas for vocabulary as well as many other aspects of the story in Jill Meyer's Prezi

• Inferring character emotions and expanding vocabulary
• Idea from Leap Learning to use worksheet from Elementary AMC to help infer emotions and draw connections to self
• And another to help draw connections in the form of a foldable from Get in the Fold!
• Discussing and expanding character trait vocabulary
• Character trait stripes from A Year of Many Firsts
• Character Trait anchor chart from The Good Life

• Reflecting on text-to-self connections (bullying)
• Rowan Salisbury School System: ideas for elementary and older students
• Identifying key information and summarizing
• Identifying theme
• Teachers Pay Teachers ($)
• In-depth analysis of theme (good for teacher to review before leading discussion)
• Introducing visualization (to aid comprehension, word finding)
• Visualization worksheet to complete during story from A Year of Many First
• Wipe-off board visualization idea from Speech is Sweet
• Formulating Wh-questions
• Quiz Me game from Primarily Speaking

• Summarizing: View a YouTube video with scene-by scene summary. I'm a fan of the Somebody-Wanted-But-So-Then strategy!