April Fool! Watch Out at School is part of our Starts With a Story Collection, which includes more than 550 picture book companions based on high quality children’s literature that support you in delivering highly-engaging interactive read alouds with follow up activities. Learn more about this children’s book below! - Jodi and the Starts With a Story Team
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SUMMARY
"April Fool! Watch Out at School" by Diane deGroat is a delightful children's book that follows the mischievous adventures of Gilbert, a lovable opossum, on April Fool's Day. Gilbert is excited about playing pranks on his classmates, but his plans backfire when everyone pranks him, including the school bully Lewis! Gilbert realizes that everyone in the class are expert pranksters, and he learns many new clever pranks from his peers that he can use on others! "April Fool! Watch Out at School" includes a hilarious battle of practical jokes throughout the school day where Gilbert tries to play a trick on anyone but nothing seems to work!. Through lively illustrations and engaging storytelling, the book highlights the importance of thinking before acting and the power of forgiveness and friendship. In the end, Gilbert thinks of the perfect prank to pull on Lewis which is no prank at all! Lewis gets so paranoid waiting for Gilberts perfect prank that he overthinks everything just to find out that he got himself all worked up for nothing and Gilbert finally delivered his perfect prank using random acts of kindness!
 USE THIS BOOK TO TEACH:
Our read aloud lesson plans for this picture book come with reading comprehension questions (with sample student responses), 30 writing prompts, teaching ideas for grammar skills, social emotional learning discussion ideas, and more. Check out our list below to get a sneak peek at some of the skills this resource teaches.
- Discuss the different characters in the story and analyze their thoughts and actions.
- Cause and effect can be a difficult skill for students. This book is a perfect mentor text for teaching this skill.
- Teach a lesson on making connections to enhance comprehension.
- Practice making predictions throughout the book. Encourage students to check and see if their predictions were correct.
- Teach a mini lesson on compound words.
- Use examples from the book to teach a lesson on punctuation.
- Have a class discussion on the importance of sportsmanship.
NO-PREP PRINTABLE ACTIVITIES:
If you are looking for “ready to go” activities for the first day of school, be sure to check out the book companion. With it you’ll receive all of the following resources to align with this specific book:
- comprehension questions
- 30Â writing prompts with themed paper
- vocabulary activities
- word study print & go activities
- ideas for grammar lessons with focus sentence printables
- social emotional learning discussion topics
- graphic organizers to target specific comprehension skills and strategies
This book is a must have for your school or classroom library. Your students are going to love completing these activities for the book and you will be impressed with how much they learn. You will want to read this book to your class every year.
GET THE PRINTABLE ACTIVITIES
ADDITIONAL BOOK SUGGESTIONS
You and your students will love the similar books listed below, which can all be found in our free picture book list.
- April Foolishness by Teresa Bateman
- Tops and Bottoms by Janet Stevens
- The Lion and The Mouse by Jerry PinkneyÂ
TRY OUT A SAMPLE COMPANION
It's hard to explain how amazing the Starts with a Story book companions are because there is just so much goodness included in each one. It's best if you experience using one for yourself. Sign up below & we'll send you an entire book companion to try out for FREE!
