We absolutely love Matt Tavares book Dasher. Like all of his books, the illustrations are absolutely beautiful. There are many different skills and strategies teachers can use this book to teach and students will be engaged with the moving storyline. This is one read aloud you can’t miss this holiday season. - Jodi and the Starts With a Story Team
SUMMARY
Dasher and her family live at J.P. Finnegan’s Traveling Circus and Menagerie. The reindeer are crammed into a small cage under the hot sun all day. People are always there to visit the reindeer. At night, Dasher listens to her Mama’s talk about a magical place under the North Star. There the ground was covered with snow and they could roam about. Dasher wishes she could live in that magical place.
One night, when the wind blows open the reindeer’s cage, Dasher takes a chance and runs into the night. She follows the North Star for as long as she can. Eventually she runs into Santa and his horse, Silverbell. Dasher helps Santa and Silverbell deliver presents to children all over the world. At the end of the night, Dasher realizes she is at the magical place her mother told her about. While she loved living in the North Pole with Santa, she missed her family. Santa helps Dasher rescue her family and bring them home. That Christmas, the family works together to pull Santa’s sleigh around the world.
USE THIS BOOK TO TEACH:
While we love that this book is a great read aloud during the holiday season, it can also be used to teach a variety of literacy concepts. Reads alouds are a great way to practice reading comprehension strategies, writing, and grammar skills. Take a look at some ideas for using this book in your classroom.
- Practice making predictions throughout the book. Encourage students to check and see if their predictions were correct.
- Visualizing can be a difficult skill for students, this book is a perfect mentor text for teaching this skill.
- Integrate informative writing by having students research and write about reindeer.
- Have students form an opinion about characters from the book and explain their reasoning.
- Teach a lesson on nouns and adverbs.
- Introduce students to multiple meaning words using examples from the book.
- Use this book to discuss the importance of kindness.
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
- 30 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 also love these similar books:
- Red and Lulu by Matt Tavares
- Cobweb Christmas by Shirley Climo
- The Animals Santa by Jan Brett
- The Night Tree by Ted Rand
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!
