Ho, ho, ho! ‘Tis the season for giving and The Core Coaches are here with the ultimate gift – ready to teach read alouds!
During this time of year, every teacher deserves to enjoy their time both in AND out of the classroom. Therefore, we designed three ready-to-teach Christmas Read-Alouds for Kids using three popular children’s books. Come with us as we dive into this winter wonderland of reading!
Christmas Crafts for Kids
Before we dive into the wonderful world of reading, we have one more gift for you! As educators, we know that fun is just as important as rigor — especially around the holidays. Therefore, we included a Christmas Craft inside each of these read-aloud resources.
While including a craft is intended to provide a creative and fun element to learning, there is more to it. Each craft is connected directly to the book the students read. Therefore, it provides an additional opportunity for revisiting and exploring the text.
Beyond extending the students’ learning it extends the lesson plans. All of our read alouds are designed to cover, at a minimum, three days of reading activities. With the addition of the craft activity, these reading activities can extend to four or even five days. Talk about the gift of time!
Let’s dive into each of these read aloud lesson plans to explore the fun Christmas Crafts students will create and other reading activities.
Memoirs of an Elf Activities
Our first Christmas read aloud for elementary students is for the ever popular book, Memoirs of an Elf by Devin Scillian. If you need to become more familiar with this book, here is a quick summary.
Memoirs of an Elf follows the adventures of Spark on Christmas Eve. On this particular Christmas Eve, chaos ensues when a little girl accidentally takes a puppy named Tugboat from Santa’s sleigh. To keep another little kid from missing out on the puppy they asked for, Spark and the other elves must figure out how to retrieve the puppy before the night ends.
This delightful and modern holiday story will surely excite your kids about reading.
Reading Questions for Memoirs of an Elf
Day one of reading Memoirs of an Elf includes several text-dependent questions that are designed to assess students’ comprehension. These questions can be used after reading, or during reading as a guide for teachers on key areas to pause and discuss the story.
Here is a sneak peek of some of the text dependent questions students will explore during their first day of reading Memoirs of an Elf:
- Who are the characters in the story?
- What happened at the beginning of the story?
- What happened after that?
- What happened next?
- How does the setting change over time?
These questions are designed to be completed as whole class learning. However, we have provided reading assignments for each student to complete individually. These reading activities can be completed as printables or digitally.
On day two of this read aloud, students revisit Memoirs of an Elf as a whole class to discuss “little known facts” throughout this story. This provides an opportunity for students to dive deeper into the text.
On the third day of this Christmas read aloud, kids once again revisit the story. This time, they are guided through the text using higher-order thinking questions. These questions take students beyond the level one text questions and ask them to look deeper by gathering insight through additional text features, like illustrations.
Examples of Integration of Knowledge and Ideas Questions for Memoirs of an Elf
- When there are 12 hours to go, how do the characters’ facial expressions help you know how they are feeling?
- What do the illustrations teach you about the disguises that the text does not?
- What is Spark doing in the illustration on the last page? How do you know?
This third day of reading also invites students to make personal connections to the text. This opportunity to personally connect with the story helps further comprehension while also helping students further develop their love and appreciation for reading!
Writing Activity for Memoirs of an Elf
Literacy development is not only about reading comprehension, but also writing. Therefore, as part of the day two lesson plan, students take time to practice writing using the “Santa’s Favorite” page.
Christmas Craft for Memoirs of an Elf
We think a craft should be included with every read aloud, no matter the time of year! However, especially at Christmas! This is why we included TWO crafts for Memoirs of an Elf!
Since the craft is always an additional activity to the core reading lesson plans, you choose how it best fits your class schedule.
With two crafts to choose from, you could allow kids to choose which one they would like to do. You could also have students do both crafts and simply add them to the reading lesson on two separate days.
How Santa Got His Job Activities
The second book in this Christmas Read Aloud collection is How Santa Got His Job by Stephen Krensky. This delightful book takes kids on a journey to find out how Santa found his perfect job.
From various careers like chimney sweep to zookeeper, your students will be enthralled with seeing how Santa found his perfect job. They will also enjoy exploring how all of his previous jobs provided him with important skills for his jolly role.
Just like the read aloud for Memoirs of an Elf, this read aloud includes a variety of literacy activities to guide students through the story. This includes three days of core lesson plans that focus on text dependent questions and writing. Then, you as the teacher can choose if you’d like to extend the learning into four or five days by using the additional activities.
Olive the Other Reindeer Activities
The third book in this Christmas read aloud bundle for first and second graders is one of our all time favorite Christmas books – Olive, the Other Reindeer by J. Otto Seibold and Vivian Walsh. We know this is a favorite for many teachers, but in case you have not read this book yet here is a quick summary.
This quirky and heartwarming children’s book is about a dog named Olive who believes she is destined to join Santa’s team of reindeer. Olive comes to believe this after mishearing the lyrics of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and thinking the line “all of the other reindeer” was in fact saying “OLIVE … the other reindeer.” So, Olive sets out for the North Pole to take her rightful place leading Santa’s sleigh!
Just with that brief introduction, you can already imagine the fun story ahead! It is truly a favorite holiday picture book for teachers and students alike. Moreover, just like the other two Christmas books in this read aloud bundle, it is an excellent choice for teaching literacy skills.
Below, you will find an overview of the various reading activities included in this read aloud. Yes, including a Christmas Craft for Olive the Other Reindeer!
By this point, they probably look very familiar! This is because all of our read alouds follow the same format. Providing students with a familiar format allows them to anticipate the types of learning activities and therefore be able to invest their mental energy in focusing on the new story at hand.
The wonderful thing about the Christmas season is that it extends over the course of a month. Therefore, you have time to explore and enjoy all three of these books with your class.
Furthermore, by using all three of these books, you end up with three ready to teach lesson plans that will each cover a week’s worth of reading. That’s three weeks of read aloud lesson plans! Add in one of our other favorite Christmas Read Alouds below and you are covered from Thanksgiving to Christmas Break!
