April Fools Day Learning

April Fools Day is coming up this Friday.
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.

Here is the book on Amazon and here is the book at Scholastic Teacher Store.
I personally use the Storia version of the book, if you have that option.

I use the book to play this reading comprehension game.
I play this game in a small group.
I read the question card to each student.
If they answer the question correctly, they roll the die
and they move that many spaces.
We continue until someone WINS.

Another group works on their writing.
They take the visual word wall which contains the characters from the story
and uses it to WRITE about the story. I always ask my students to to draw a picture about what they write about as well.
Some students are better at visualizing their thoughts than writing their thoughts.
I also know that sometimes once a student draws their picture,
they can improve their writing using their picture.