Too Many Tamales Sequencing & More

Have any of you read the book Too Many Tamales by Gary Soto?  It's such a cute book to read with your kiddos.  I usually communicatively read through it with my 2nd - 5th graders to work on those higher level language targets.

Here's why I <3 this book:

• It's great to show how another culture celebrates Christmas.  I like to get my hispanic students to explain to the other kids what tamales are and how they celebrate Christmas with their family.
• A variety of skills can be targeted when reading through it.  It's perfect for sequencing, inferencing, predicting, and cause/effect.
• You see many different emotions in it - happy, excited, shame, sadness, shock, etc.  Love this for my pragmatic kids.
• The illustrations are clear and expressive.
• It provides opportunity for lots of new vocabulary.

Today, my 3rd graders were working on sequencing.  I saw {this} post on pinterest last year and made my own sequencing road out of bulletin board paper.  Here's how it turned out:

The kids had so much fun with this.  While we read the story, I asked inferencing/predicting questions and had the kids write down words with their articulation sounds in them.  

Then, we sequenced the story using the road. 

I then had them go back and discuss the story elements.  They loved being able to get up and move around.  It was a lot more motivating for them.

Cute, right?  I made a packet to accompany Too Many Tamales that includes some graphic organizers for predicting and cause/effect as well as inferencing questions with answers.  There is also the "I can find my speech sound" tamale worksheets.  HERE is the link to the freebie!

What else could you do with a sequencing road OR the book Too Many Tamales??