I love using Earth Day literacy activities in the month of April. Saving the earth is important to me, so why not add in Earth Day activities all month! Check out all my Earth Day literacy activities including book recommendations, word sorts, and passages- both digital and print.
Earth Day Books
It’s no secret I love adding books to my library often, including Earth Day books. I like to add books for students to read themselves, as well as books that are great for reading aloud.
Save Electricity is a Scholastic book that is appropriate for elementary students. The reading level is probably best for third grade readers, and up. With a large amount of multi-syllable words, and more challenging content-specific vocabulary, students can work on decoding, while learning a lot. It includes a lot of nonfiction text features, as well as great photographs, and graphics. The interest level is very high, as a result! While this book can definitely be read by students in small groups, it also can be used to teach nonfiction text features, with all the great examples.
What Does It Mean to Be Green? is an Earth Day book from Sourcebooks Kids. I absolutely love the colorful illustrations in this book and highly recommend using it for a read aloud this month. Students love hearing about ways that they can “be green” and help save the earth. Reading it aloud to your students can lead to great discussions and actions.
Earth Day CVC Word Sorts
These Earth Day CVC word sorts are a great way for students to practice decoding, and categorizing. Focusing on CVC words, students have the chance to show their knowledge of consonants and vowels, within words. The sorts include both sorting by vowel sound, and by word family. Both of these skills are important to practice, and simple to do via word sorts.
Here are some more ideas about how to use these Earth Day CVC word sorts.
Earth Day Reading Passages
You know I never miss a chance to focus on a theme when reading, which is why I love these Earth Day Reading Passages! Students can further apply their decoding skills that they worked on during the sorts, to words within context, in these passages. First warming up with individual word reading, students gain confidence before diving into reading the Earth Day reading passages. After reading, as always, it’s important to focus on comprehension. Students respond to “directly in the text” comprehension questions. Then as a final activity, students can find each focus word, by highlighting or circling the words, in the reading passage.
While my printable formats of these I am a Reader passages have been more popular than the digital format, I do also have the digital Earth Day passages, if that’s something you want try out. These can be displayed on your larger screen, or shared with students via devices.
