Day of the Dead by Tony Johnston Reading, Writing, Extension Activities Bundle

This Hispanic Heritage Month, explore the traditions of Dia de los Muertos with this bundle of reading, writing, and extension activities! Packed with differentiated tasks and scaffolds, this unit is great for the real-life multi-level classroom -- and great for English Learners!

About 17 pages for direct student use, 33 pages in total (including teacher tips, directions and standards for each activity, answer keys and examples). Check out the preview to see the full Table of Contents!

Reading Activities to accompany the anchor text, "Day of the Dead" by Tony Johnston:

• Reading Scavenger Hunt (an active listening checklist with illustrated vocabulary in English and Spanish)
• "Check Your Understanding" reading comprehension questions
• Bilingual Context Clues cut-and-paste activity
• "Holidays Around the World" graphic organizer for nonfiction note-taking

Informative / Explanatory Writing Project

Differentiated writing scaffolds help students show what they've learned about Day of the Dead!

• Writing Scaffold 1: Informational paragraph with sentence frames, word banks, and spaces to draw
• Writing Scaffold 2: Informational essay with cloze passages, prompts, and sentence frames
• Día de los Muertos-themed publishing pages, to show off a festive final draft! Celebrate the writing process!

Fun extension activities!

• Calavera Craft: Make a sugar skull mask!
• OR Calavera coloring page -- if you prefer, students can decorate the sugar skull without making a mask! ;)
• 2 vocabulary word searches (one intermediate, one advanced!)

Activities are aligned to Common Core anchor standards for use across grade levels.

Happy Hispanic Heritage month, and feliz Día de los Muertos!