Weather Read-aloud and Activities for Kindergarten and First Grade

My students can’t get enough of these National Geographic Kids read-alouds and I love them because it allows them to meet the reading informational text and the science standards at the same time. It is great to fill two needs with one deed!

The Read-Aloud Lesson

For our read-aloud lesson, I read ‘Weather’ by Kristin Baird Rattini to my first graders. After I read the text, we answered text dependent questions about the key ideas and details. If you want to learn more about how text dependent questions are used to meet the reading standards, click here.

We held a class discussion on types of weather presented in the book and I created an anchor chart of the different types of weather. Then my students independently matched the weather word to the correct picture with this fun graphic organizer.

Revisit the Text together

For the second lesson, I revisited the text and together we answered text dependent questions about the craft and structure. The craft and structure questions focused on the text features and vocabulary from the text. We discussed why the author included a table of contents, how the zoomed-in photographs help us better understand the text, and how to use the glossary. The kids were learning about informational text and about weather at the same time!

Define The Words

Next, the students defined some weather words from the text and identified how they knew the meaning. The third lesson was focused around the integration of knowledge and ideas standards. These additional revisits to the text caused students to think deeper about the text, then they ever would have if we just read it once without answering any text dependent questions. However, the students were engaged and really liked pushing themselves to think deeply about the information they were learning. After we answered the questions about integration of knowledge and ideas together, I had them draw an activity that they could do in each type of weather. They enjoyed thinking of different things they could do and I loved seeing their answers.

The Activity

Last, we made a ‘What’s the Weather’ wheel and wrote about our favorite type of weather to wrap up the read-aloud. They kids loved these activities.

We understand that it can be difficult to come up with ideas, however,  how to teach the core standards during your read aloud time. You don’t have to do it alone! We have made it easy for you to teach these lessons in your classroom. If you’re interested, we’ve created 10 informational text read-alouds. You can buy each informational read-aloud individually or in bundles.  You can purchase the 10 informational text read-alouds