Too Many Toys FREE Interactive Read-aloud
Try our text dependent questions, lesson plans, graphic organizers, writing, and craft instructions for FREE
Teachers are loving our interactive read-alouds. They are saying things like, “This is my favorite TPT purchase ever! Used it exactly as-is and ended up with a beautiful bulletin board that my principal is crazy about. Couldn’t have been easier to use!” and, “Fantastic value! I’m excited to look at your other book companions sets and bundles now. :)” and even “I am obsessed with these amazing resources!”
We want every primary teacher to try these read-alouds in their classrooms. Once you do, you will understand how we are meeting all literature and informational text core standards by reading aloud current children’s books.
We decided on Too Many Toys by David Shannon to use as a free read-aloud for teachers to try because it can be taught anytime during the school year and who doesn’t LOVE David Shannon books!?!?
During the first lesson we read the book to our students all the way through. They listen to the story and simply enjoy it. Once we finish reading it, we ask key ideas and details text dependent questions. You can learn more about text dependent questions here. Then the students complete a key ideas and details graphic organizer. We chose a somebody, wanted, but, so, then graphic organizer because it fit this story structure. The key ideas and details graphic organizers change in each interactive read-aloud, depending on the story. We believe speaking and listening are at the heart of every reading lesson, so we love to incorporate discussions. For this lesson, we have students retell the story to a partner using their graphic organizer. You can check out other ways we get our students to talk in small groups here.
We spend about 4 days on each read-aloud. The second day we re-read the story to the students. This surprises some teachers, but we can ensure you that by the third lesson, your students will be begging you to revisit the story again. Primary grade students enjoy listening to a story more than once. They love it even more when they start to gain a deeper understanding of the book during each closer look. During the second lesson of Too Many Toys we read aloud the story but stop throughout to ask the craft and structure text dependent questions.Once we are done answering the questions we complete a craft and structure graphic organizer. We chose a “Character Close Up” for this read-aloud. The students love completing the character close up on Spencer. Every kid can relate to Spencer in one way or another because they all love their toys.
Our lesson plans will guide you step-by-step through this process. Each of our read-alouds follow the same lesson structure so both you and your students will learn what to expect. On the third lesson we revisit the story to ask the integration of knowledge and ideas text dependent questions. These questions mainly focus on what new information we are learning from the illustrations. The students love this part! They love finding fun things the illustrator did throughout the story that they didn’t realize the first couple of times they read it.
This is also where we add a writing in response to the text activity. In Too Many Toys we have the students form an opinion about their favorite toy. We talk about the parts of an opinion writing piece using our fingers. We model how to write a our opinion by color coding a rough draft. Then the students write their own opinion about their favorite toy.
The fourth lesson the students write their final draft and illustrate and color their favorite toy to accompany their writing piece. We ask students to share their writing in small groups using these speaking and listening strategies. They love hearing about each other’s favorite toys. You can try our Too Many Toys Interactive Read-aloud for free. We know you will fall in love with these 4 day lesson plans and your students will be begging for more.
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