Reading Activities for Room on the Broom
Room on the Broom is the perfect book for the Halloween season in your preschool, kindergarten or first grade classroom! Julia Donaldson, the well-known author of The Gruffalo, has written another crowd pleaser. Your students will love it, and so will you! Read on to find teaching ideas to bring this book to your classroom!
Read on to learn more!
- Why Read Room on the Broom?
- Teaching Letter Names with Room on the Broom
- Phonemic Awareness Practice
- Comprehension with Room on the Broom
- Writing and Vocabulary
- Click to Get the Lesson Plans on TPT!
- Where to Get Room on the Broom?
- More Great Fall Resources for Your Classroom
- Let's Connect!
Why Read Room on the Broom?
Room on the Broom is a delightful rhyming story with a wonderful message about friendship. This is a perfect book to help your young readers master rhyming, an essential phonemic awareness skill. It also has plenty of opportunities for letter naming practice, building vocabulary, and comprehension skills like sequencing and story grammar. This book offers you a lot in a charming story that your students will love. If you’d like to know more about how these components fit into the Science of Reading, read this blog post.
I use Room on the Broom in my kindergarten classroom to teach phonics, phonemic awareness, comprehenion, and writing/vocabulary. Here are a few of my favorite ideas to use with this book. Be sure to grab the resource on TPT to get all of the lesson plans and reading activities for your classroom.
Teaching Letter Names with Room on the Broom
It’s October and my kindergarteners are working hard to learn letter names and sounds. One of their favorite lessons is Letter Friends. I use the letter cards from this resource for this activity. There are two ways to play the game.
Version 1 – If I don’t have a lot of prep time, I just give half of the students an uppercase letter and half of the students a lowercase letter. Then, I play a little music while they walk around, finding their Letter Friend. It is great practice with letter naming. You hear things like, “Oh, I have h, not n. See, h is tall. I think Phoenix has n.” The game takes just a few minutes, and then we swap cards and play again.
Version 2 – If I have a little more prep time, I “hide” the uppercase letters around the room. Then I give each student a lowercase letter and play music while they find their Letter Friend. They love to help each other, and the activity reinforces the match between uppercase and lowercase letters. I follow up the lesson with the Letter Matching Center or one of the letter learning printables, like the witch hat dot-to-dot!
Phonemic Awareness Practice
“The witch had a cat
First sentence from Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson
and a hat that was black,
And long ginger hair
in a braid down her back.”
Isn’t that a charming rhyme? As I read the book, I ask students to listen for the rhyme. There are so many, we can’t identify them all! Then, I use the 24 Rhyming Cards from the resource. Many of the words in the Rhyming Cards come from the book, and we practice identifying which words rhyme, and which do not! I place the cards in a pocket chart, and then I pull one of the cards. Students take turns coming up to find the rhymes. They can also play that game as a pocket chart center!
The resource also includes Rhyming Center Cards that students use to find the rhyme. I like to laminate them and put sticky dots on them so that the pieces stay together. And there are also Rhyming Sorts and other Printables to help students really grow their phonemic awareness skills!
Comprehension with Room on the Broom
The goal of reading instruction is skilled readers who comprehend text. In the primary grades, teachers need to prepare students for the literary analysis they will do when they are older. And that means talking about books.
My favorite comprehension activity is the Sequencing Sticks. The Room on the Broom resource comes with color and black-and-white. I like to make several sets of the colored images. I place each set in a bin, and students work together in partners or groups of three to retell the story. They love this! They think the Sequencing Sticks are like puppets, and you can hear them talking in their dragon voice or barking like a dog as they retell the story. I use the Sequencing Printable as independent practice at the end of the lesson. It’s a great formative assessment!
My students would probably say that the Character Hats are their favorite activity. I like to give my kiddos choice, so I let them choose between the witch and the dragon. I use the word protagonist to describe the witch and antagonist to describe the dragon, and they love those big words! It is so fun to watch them at play time as they wear the hats and act out the story!
Writing and Vocabulary
If you read this blog often, you know that vocabulary development is something I write about frequently. Check out this blog post if you want to know WHY!
With kindergarten students, vocabulary instruction and writing go hand in hand. My kinders are still figuring out letters and words and sentences. I love Write Around the Room Activities because they get kids moving, and they help students connect words with pictures. That reinforces the vocabulary and builds their ability to write about their reading!
This resource includes three different types of paper so you can choose what works best for your students. The resource includes 12 Word Cards and 2 Writing Practice Pages (each with 6 words). I like to spread out all 12 Word Cards. Then, I give half the class one Writing Practice Page and the other half gets the OTHER Writing Practice Page. That means that the kids are not all trying to write the same word at the same time. And, I can swap the groups the next day and get two writing lessons!
Click to Get the Lesson Plans on TPT!
Where to Get Room on the Broom?
If you don’t already have the book, check it out from your library or grab a copy here. (As an Amazon Affiliate, if you click on the link and make a purchase, I make a small commission, at no charge to you! Thanks for supporting this teacherpreneur!)
Or, check out this video recording of the story on Ms. Cotton’s Corner on YouTube.
More Great Fall Resources for Your Classroom
This Balloons Over Broadway Reading Unit has a similar focus as Room on the Broom and is perfect for kindergarten and first grade. Click to grab it on TPT!
The Leaf Thief is the perfect book for fall! The resource focuses on Science of Reading aligned content like rhyming, letter naming, and comprehension practice. And the story is so cute!
I love Clip Cards because they help students build fine motor skills AND practice important content. This bundle is growing, and will include at least 12 sets by the time it is done. Grab it today, and save money!
Let’s Connect!
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Happy teaching!
Susan
Clip art by Kate Hadfield. Grab it here!