If you are an elementary school teacher, then chances are you have several Jory John read alouds. Even if you haven’t read one of these stories, you have obviously heard of these amazing books by the author Jory John – which is why you’re here!
Welcome! Whether you are new to the world of Jory John’s wonderfully funny and educational picture books or are a long time fan like us, we are excited that you found this blog post. Moreover, we are excited to help you and your students dive deeper into these amazing picture books by using read alouds. More specifically, we are excited for you to use these Jory John read alouds!
As long-time educators with a passion for amazing children’s books, The Core Coaches love the lessons taught in each of Jory John’s books. For years, we have loved reading and teaching books by Jory John. This is why we created read alouds for six of our favorite books:
Whether you are new to these books or have loved them as long as we have, join us below as we share with you the engaging and effective learning activities we have created for each of these titles.
Ready to Teach Jory John Read Alouds
Before jumping into each book and the reading activities aligned with it, it is important to understand how to use a read aloud. Moreover, how to use our read alouds.
As current and former elementary school teachers (and instructional coaches), we know that read alouds are important to the success of every student. They are the foundation of literacy development. They are also the foundation of helping students develop a love of reading.
While we know that reading is essential for any early elementary school classroom, we also know the reality behind creating an effective read aloud. It takes time! Time that as a teacher you don’t always have (or are not always compensated for). Therefore, we made it our mission to create the best read alouds around, for teachers and students. And, these Jory John read alouds are no exception!
Read Aloud Structure
First of all, all of our read alouds are created using common core standards. Therefore, you can rest assured that your students will be engaging with materials designed to help them develop reading comprehension across several standards.
To help reach each reading standard, our read aloud format includes a variety of literacy activities. These activities include everything from before reading questions to a quiz after reading. In between, students will engage with various reading comprehension activities – ranging from text dependent questions to a writing prompt.
Along with the rigorous reading activities we have included different opportunities for students to explore reading in a creative way. The first of these creative activities are the retelling puppets. The retelling puppets included in each read aloud allows students to demonstrate their understanding of the story in a fun way. Moreover, it offers a differentiated approach to learning.
In addition to the retelling puppets, each read aloud also includes a final craft activity. This craft activity will differ from story to story as it will align with each individual story. Like the retelling puppets, the craft activity provides a new way for students to demonstrate their understanding of text.
Below, you will see examples of these different reading activities for each Jory John picture book.
How to teach a Jory John read aloud
As you explore the various literacy activities you may wonder how to teach each one. Not to worry! We have included detailed lesson plans with every read aloud. Therefore, providing you with step by step directions to ensure a seamless delivery of the lessons.
While you will get a detailed lesson plan for each day, here is a quick overview of how to plan to teach each read aloud.
Each of our read alouds is designed to cover anywhere from three to five days of lessons. During the first three days, students will engage with reading activities that focus on several important elements of literacy:
- Predicting
- Story elements
- Story sequencing
- Character traits
These elements are explored through whole class comprehension questions, response to text activities (such as sorting and matching), and graphic organizers. You can choose to have students engage with each activity in a printable form or digitally through the Easel platform on Teachers Pay Teachers.
After the initial three days of core instruction, you can choose whether you want to add in the additional activities. The additional activities include a writing activity, vocabulary cards, retelling puppets, a craft, and a quiz.
These additional activities can be used for instruction on days four and five or added early in the week to extend learning on days one through three. You choose what works best for your classroom! Whether you choose to focus on the core literacy activities during the first three days or extend the read aloud for a full week, your students will engage with several reading standards.
Read Aloud Activities For Jory John Books
Now that you have an idea of how our read alouds are structured, it’s time to explore them in more detail using our favorite Jory John read aloud books. Every Jory John read aloud packet follows our tried and true format outlined above.
Using the same read aloud format is a great way to support students’ learning.Once students know the basic format of a read aloud they can focus on the content specific activities for each book. This helps with literacy development and engagement.
In addition, this similar structure makes it easier for you as the teacher to plan! Take a look at the content specific activities we have created for these six Jory John books, and then get ready to use them with your students.
The Smart Cookie Read Aloud
One of the reasons we love a book series is because it makes it easy to plan for read alouds for the whole year. For example, two of Jory John’s books are perfect to use as students head back to school.
The Smart Cookie and The Cool Bean are two of our favorite back to school books. These two books teach important lessons for helping students prepare for a new school year.
In addition, by introducing students to this read aloud routine as part of your back to school routines you are creating clear expectations for read aloud time. Therefore, helping create an effective routine and procedure for read aloud time that you can refer to all year long.
The Smart Cookie Activities
In The Smart Cookie, the main character learns that there is more than one way to be smart! This is a wonderful lesson and reminder to young kids who are just beginning the school year. Below is a sneak peek at some of the reading activities that we have created for you to use with The Smart Cookie.
The Smart Cookie Comprehension Questions
The Smart Cookie Worksheets
Above is just a quick overview of the different reading activities we have created for The Smart Cookie. We suggest beginning the week by reading the book out loud to your students and using the whole group comprehension questions to engage your class in the story on that first day. Then, continue to explore the book for at least two more days with the detailed lesson plans for days two and three. After the third day, choose if you’d like to continue to explore the book with the additional activities.
The Cool Bean Read Aloud
The Cool Bean is a creative Jory John read aloud that focuses on the theme of kindness and fitting in. As you know, these are lessons that are just as important as academic lessons. Moreover, lessons that are important to address at the beginning of the year.
This is why we love this book as back to school read aloud. Consider adding it to your back to school read aloud list or pairing it with The Smart Cookie above. This book is also a great choice to use anytime of year when you want to teach students about kindness.
Like The Smart Cookie read aloud, The Cool Bean read aloud is designed to be used for an entire week. It includes activities for whole group, small group, and independent work.
Reading Comprehension Questions for The Cool Bean
Beyond the reading activities above, you will also find multiple lessons that include a writing activity, a reading quiz, and a craft activity.
The Cool Bean Craft
The Couch Potato Read Aloud
With more and more expectations on kids in today’s world, even young children can feel overwhelmed at times. Therefore, as you and your students move further into the school year you may notice a need to address these themes. Reading is a wonderful way to explore complex themes like stress and Jory John does a great job of addressing these feelings in his book The Couch Potato.
The Couch Potato teaches children about creating balance in their lives. With the read aloud activities we created for this book, your students will not only read about how the couch potato creates balance, but learn how to do it in their own lives as well.
The Couch Potato Activities
Here is a quick look at some of the reading activities we have created for The Couch Potato. These activities will engage students in exploring the important themes of this book while continuing to develop their literacy skills.
This book is great any time of year that you feel your students need to explore how to create balance in their lives.
The Sour Grape Read Aloud
While you can teach Jory John’s books at any time of the year, we love using his book The Sour Grape in the fall, particularly around Thanksgiving.
This story revolves around a sour grape who becomes fed up with other fruits in the bunch because of an unfortunate misunderstanding. Despite being plump and ripe, and once upon a time…sweet…the sour grape’s got some pretty thick skin for a grape.
Throughout the story, the sour grape experiences minor inconveniences that make him feel sour, like feeling frustrated and holding a grudge. However, over time the sour grape realizes that being sour is draining. Upon realizing the error of his ways, the sour grape begins to see the importance of being grateful.
In the end, the sour grape learns to appreciate life because it’s pretty sweet. While this story of gratitude is unique compared to other Thanksgiving themed read alouds, we think it is a great way to share a new point of view with students on the different things we can be thankful for – especially when you look at things in the right sort of way!
The Sour Grape Activities
The read aloud we created for The Sour Grape follows our tried and true format that teachers have loved for years. This means that it includes learning activities that provides nywhere from three to five days of lesson plans.
These activities begin with before reading comprehension questions and continue with comprehension activities to engage with during and after reading. In addition, students continue to explore the story of the sour grape through writing and creative tasks.
To extend the important lessons of gratitude and appreciation for self, this read aloud can be paired with other Thanksgiving themed activities. Whether you choose to pair this book with other similar themed activities or teach it on its own – we know you and your students will love this picture book by Jory John.
The Big Cheese Jory John Read Aloud
As with all of the other books, The Big Cheese explores important themes in a humorous way. It also includes delightful illustrations by Pete Oswal. The perfect combination we all expect from a Jory John book!
This particular story follows a mouse named Marvin who dreams of being the biggest cheese around. However, when Marvin achieves his goal and becomes the Big Cheese, he realizes that leadership comes with its own challenges and responsibilities.
The themes covered in this book include leadership, friendship, and self-awareness, which are all themes to explore with young readers. While some of Jory John’s books are best suited at certain times of the school year, The Big Cheese is a wonderful book to read at any time of the school year.
The Big Cheese Read Aloud Questions
Just like our other Jory John read alouds, we have created several standards based read aloud questions for this book. Below is a quick look at some of the classroom activities we do that are supported by the questions we have created.
Remember, in addition to these read aloud questions this read aloud also includes additional activities. This includes writing pages and other engaging activities.
The Bad Seed Read Aloud
As a teacher, one of the most important things to an effective classroom is effective classroom management. This includes managing student behavior in a positive way.
One way to help teach your students about positive behavior is through the book The Bad Seed. In this book, a sunflower seed learns that it is never too late to change negative behavior. This is a great book to use during the year when you need to revisit classroom expectations to help re-establish effective classroom management.
Like any of our read aloud activity packs, The Bad Seed read aloud includes activities that can be completed digitally or as printables. It also includes detailed lesson plans to help you implement every activity easily and effectively.
The Good Egg Read Aloud FREE
If you have read The Bad Seed then you are probably familiar with The Good Egg! This follow up book is about the good egg who is surrounded by eleven other rowdy eggs. The other eggs’ behavior makes the good egg feel like they always have to be good! Eventually, cracking under all the pressure.
The moral of this story is an important lesson for young kids. It teaches them that they are not responsible for other people’s actions. It also teaches them that it is okay to not always be perfect! An important lesson that can help teach young kids about different emotions.
Since this is a follow up book to The Bad Seed, we suggest teaching it within a week or two of teaching The Bad Seed. To make it easy to cover both books, we have included both books in our Jory John book bundle. We have also made a FREE read aloud for The Good Egg!
Therefore, if you are new to the Jory John book series you can test out the book and read alouds for free before diving into our read aloud bundles.
