Shared Reading Activities - Look and Listen Little Apple

Shared reading is an opportunity to teach your little ones to read but also provide a platform for a range of other learning experiences! We are overjoyed to bring you another printable pack of activities to support the shared reading of our newest short rhyming text - Look and Listen Little Apple.

You can teach reading with this text in a range of formats:

• printable pages (print and staple to make a book)
• printable student book (print and staple the blackline version)
• digital (open the MS Powerpoint file on a device or board)
• animated reading (play the video on a device or board and listen and track the words)

This short text is perfect for the beginning of the school year when our little learners can be feeling a range of emotions and nervous about making friends. The story sees little apple fall down on the ground. He is sad. He sees another sad apple. Together they chat their way to happiness and a new friendship! Eyes and ears are used in the very early stages of their friendship. Use this text to help teach your students how to open a new friendship:

• look for someone to become a new friend at school
• walk up to them
• smile and make a nice face
• say hello
• look at them and listen to them when they talk
• have a conversation

In the printable pack, we've included a list of questions that you can use to encourage discussion, comprehension and connection to the text. These are ideal of a second or third read of the text. During the first read, just allow students to listen and join in to the reading.

Don't forget - you can also watch, listen and read with our animated version on Youtube!

Comprehension activities after shared reading

Six comprehension activities are also provided. You can do these activities as a whole class, particularly if you project them onto the whiteboard, in guided reading groups or independently when more capable.

An activity is provided to help students develop the strategies of:

• making connections
• monitoring
• predicting
• questioning
• summarizing
• visualizing

Predicting

Do this before your read. Students can write or draw why they think apple is sad. Perhaps they will make some connections here too.

Monitoring

Have students order the story by cutting and pasting the story boards. With each piece they will return to their memory of the story and monitor the progress of the developing plot and story. 

A 'one page read' is perfect for little learners to practice independent reading and start to work with the language and features of the text. Ask them to read along with you a few times, read to a partner, and then look for the nouns and verbs. 

Making Connections

Talk about things that make us happy and sad. My Sam struggled with this as he is not often sad (true story!). We talked it out and he suggested I make a worksheet that says 'when I have been frustrated'. You could easily modify this activity and just let the kids cross the word out and write a different feeling. Pure differentiation!

Questioning

Students can explore main idea and detail by asking themselves questions to uncover them. This may need to be done collaboratively with little learners. 

Summarizing

Use the SWBST scaffold to unpack the story and provide a summary. Students can write or draw. 

Visualizing

Students can draw a picture to visualize what they predict is in the broader setting of the story. Here they will use some connections they have to the text as well.

Students can write their own apple themed story using a planning page and publishing pages provided. 

We added some activities for phonics ('at' word family) and fine motor (pinning and tracing) to integrate with the apple theme. 

One Page Craft

We know you love one page crafts so have provided one to accompany the story. What a great addition to your classroom displays to help bring back the memories and new connections the students will make after they read the text. Visuals are powerful and something that students have made themselves provide a powerful bridge for accessing past experiences. 

Although the text is short, to allow emergent readers to feel successful, plenty of rich learning can follow, including a discussion on friendship and feelings. Following a class talk about appropriate play in your learning environment, help students break down the steps needed for making new friends with this poster. The steps are gently uncovered in the text. Ask students to role play how to establish and initiate play with their peers. Talk about feelings and how we can care for our sad friends. Talk about proactively seeking friendship and interaction when we are feeling down and how this can turn our day around!

You can snag the poster FREE today: I Can Make Friends

We hope your little learners love these 10 activities and our original rhyming text. Use some or all, there is enough for a whole week of literacy engagement!