The Giving Tree Activities Plus a Free File
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If you’re looking for an engaging read aloud for this spring, be sure to add The Giving Tree to your lesson plans! In fact, The Giving Tree activities can help you and your students make the most of the read aloud. In this post, I’m going to share some of my favorite classroom activities for The Giving Tree.
The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein is one book that I distinctly remember from my youth. It is the story of a boy who grows under the caring attention of an apple tree. As the boy grows up, the tree gives the boy what he needs to be happy at different points in his life. By the end of the book, the tree has given the boy everything it has. All that remains of the tree is a stump for his now-elderly friend to sit and rest.
The Giving Tree is definitely a book that lingers with you. There are many messages that students can take away from this book, including friendship, sacrifice, and more. I have also found that this book sparks great conversations about how we use and care for our natural resources. That’s why I have always liked to use The Giving Tree for an Earth Day read aloud.
5 Activities for The Giving Tree
I love to enhance the read aloud experience for students by including a variety of comprehension activities. These activities are part of our Engaging Readers units. I wanted to share a few activities for The Giving Tree that you can use to help your students practice important literacy skills after reading this book together as a class.
1. The Giving Tree Video
As part of our Engaging Readers units, we read a text multiple times in order to dig deep into the meaning of the story. We read the book each day during the unit, so it’s helpful to have a video to bring some variety to the read aloud. It’s also a great way to provide a different model of fluency. Here is one example of a video that you can use throughout your unit for The Giving Tree.
2. Responding to Text
After reading the discussing the story together multiple times, the students can get a chance to respond to the text in different ways.
In this example, students will write and illustrate their favorite part of the story. Giving the students the chance to draw a picture is an easy way to differentiate this reading response activity for the learners in your classroom.
Students can do their best to share their thoughts in writing, but they’ll also have a picture to help them get their message across.
3. Making Connections
Another common way that students can respond to text is by making connections. This is an important skill for our young students to develop because it supports reading comprehension.
In the case of The Giving Tree, students could connect to the gifts the tree gave to help the boy by writing about a gift they gave to help a friend.
I love this response for several reasons. This student said: “One day, I gave Makayla a charm. It’s like the tree gave the boy all her apples.” This shows that she understands the kind gesture of the tree in the story because she’s connecting it to a kind gesture she showed to a friend.
(AND you must appreciate the A+! Right?)
4. The Giving Tree Craft
I always love to include a fun craft as part of a book unit. It’s a great way for students to reflect on the story while also practicing other skills. For The Giving Tree, we like to combine the craft with sentence studies.
Students will take scrambled words to create a sentence that goes along with the craft. They can use clues like capitalization and punctuation to help them put the words in order.
Students can also improve their hand strength and coordination as they tear green paper into small pieces to create the leaves and brown paper for the trunk. I love how the crafts for The Giving Tree turned out.
The Giving Tree activities I’ve shared so far in the post can all be found in a resource full of interactive read aloud lessons for spring. The Giving Tree is one of four books included in this set of activities. You can find them here:
5. The Giving Tree STEM Challenge
Finally, STEM challenges are another engaging way to tie in your read aloud to other content area practice. The Giving Tree is no exception!
For this STEM activity, students are given craft sticks, red pom poms, and a toilet paper roll. They are tasked with building a tree that can hold the most apples (pom poms).
It’s so fun to see the students stretching their critical thinking muscles as they design and build their trees. STEM challenges are also a great way to help students practice their problem-solving skills with peers, since they can work together in groups for this challenge. It’s also neat to see their ideas come together to make a truly unique creation through cooperation and teamwork. Here are couple more examples of the results:
This STEM activity for The Giving Tree is included in a set of resources along with differentiated math and literacy centers that also connect to the story. You can take a closer look at everything included in this extension unit by clicking below:
FREE EARTH DAY ACTIVITY
As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, I like to read The Giving Tree during April to go along with Earth Day lesson plans.
If you’re working on your own lesson plans for Earth Day, I’ve made this little game for you to use in your classroom. Students will solve equations to build an Earth Day-inspired image.
Just fill out your information in the box below and I’ll send the file straight to your inbox!
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Deedee Wills
My teaching career allowed me to experience teaching in different classroom environments and grades. My heart belongs to early childhood education. My job is to make teaching FUN, ENGAGING, and EASIER. Welcome!
Hi, I'm DeedeE.
My teaching career allowed me to experience teaching in different classroom environments and grades. My heart belongs to early childhood education. My job is to make teaching FUN, ENGAGING, and EASIER. Welcome!
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