If you’ve read First Day Jitters or The Big Test to your students, then you are going to love the book Field Trip Fiasco! This book has the familiar characters of Mrs. Hartwell and her class. This would be a great book to read before or after your own class goes on a field trip. It can be used to discuss the expectations of field trips or introduce your students to a unit on animals and or observations. - Jodi and the Starts With a Story Team
SUMMARY
Mrs. Hartwell, a favorite character from the book First Day Jitters, is back in this field trip story. She is planning to take her class on a field trip to the zoo to be animal observers. Their last field trip did not go well so this time Mrs. Hartwell has done her research and prepared with her bag of tricks.
Despite her planning, the students come across several problems while at the zoo. First, the bus breaks down but Mrs. Hartwell is prepared with animal crackers. When two girls trip and get hurt she has bandages, and when Eddie gets sprayed by the elephant she has an extra shirt. Mrs. Hartwell realizes the students writing on their observation sheets is the cause of these accidents and allows the students to put them away and enjoy the zoo. When they return to school the students write about their trip and it is clear everyone had a great time.
USE THIS BOOK TO TEACH:
Even if your class is not taking a field trip, you can use this book to teach a great lesson in your classroom. We recommend using this book to teach your students reading comprehension strategies, integrate your units of study in writing, introduce new grammar skills, and teach students about social emotional learning.
- Ask students to make predictions and inferences throughout the book.
- Examine the setting of this book and discuss its importance.
- Incorporate narrative writing by asking students to write about their own field trip or visit to the zoo.
- Teach how-to writing by asking students to use what they learned from Mrs. Hartwell about having a successful field trip.
- Identify the different time order words throughout the book.
- Teach a lesson on how writers use interjections to express emotion.
- Discuss the importance of problem solving.
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
We know your students are going to love this read aloud. This resource has everything you will need to teach your students reading comprehension skills, writing, grammar and social emotional learning. You will have plenty of worksheets, activities and mini lessons to choose from depending on the needs of your class.
GET THE PRINTABLE ACTIVITIES
ADDITIONAL BOOK SUGGESTIONS
You and your students will also love these similar books:
- First Day Jitters by Julie Danneberg
- The Big Test by Julie Danneberg
- My Mouth is a Volcano by Julia Cook
- We Don’t Eat Our Classmates by Ryan T. Higgins
TRY OUT A SAMPLE COMPANION
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