April Fools Day Learning

April Fools Day is coming up.. Although it might be fun to play a harmless prank on your students and play fun of the day, I want to present to you an alternative that is FUN, educational, and also lets the idea of April Fools play out. I suggest using the book April Foolishness by Teresa Bateman and Nadine Bernard Wescott to create fun literacy stations.

Grab the Book April Foolishness

I highly recommend you grabbing this book. Here is the book on Amazon and here is the book at Scholastic Teacher Store. It can be a little hard to find. You can watch it here on Youtube.

Vocabulary Integration

One of my educational goals has been to include more vocabulary into what I teach and when I speak. I have really smart little learners in my classroom and they need engaging words introduced often. When reading this story, I go through some interesting vocabulary words before we begin to read. Then as we read, we circle back to what those words mean. It is fun when you see your little use these vocabulary words in their reading and writing.

April Foolishness Story Sequencing

Next, we sequence the story April Foolishness together on a pocket chart. It is fun to use the book for prompting and support to put the events in order. Once we do this together, we can move to more learning and independent activities.

Reading Comprehension Game

The show stopper in my classroom is always the reading comprehension game. This activity is one my learners RUN to. You get the game board, questions, and answer key. When we play this game, we also keep data to keep track on what our learners understand.

Independent Sequencing Printable

Next, in small groups, our learners can complete this sequencing printable on their own. They can refer to the pocket chart sorting pieces as needed.

Since this story is also about farm animals and what they provide, I added this printable to allow learners to work on what farm animals give people.

Writing Prompts

Now, I love to provide learners with thoughtful prompts to think about the story in different ways. Then, I mix and match writing prompts all the time so learners in a small group can all be responding to the story with a different writing prompt. I also love how these prompts have word walls on the side to help guide writing.

To begin, I love to see little learners think about the story and how they would respond if they were a character in the book. It is funny to see their thoughts on paper because they truly think differently than I do.

Finally, as you can see, my little learners are progressing on their writing skills. I am looking for phonetic spelling, capital letters to start the sentence, and punctuation.

You can grab this unit for April Foolishness here.