Use The Giving Snowman by Julia Zheng to strengthen your students' comprehension skills, build their vocabulary, and help them understand how words work.
Kindness, friendship, and gratitude take center stage in this engaging winter story where one character's generosity inspires others to give back. Students will explore three key comprehension strategies—identifying the author's purpose, making connections, and understanding text structure—as they uncover how giving and helping others shape the story's message.
The word work lesson focuses on common and proper nouns, guiding students to notice how authors sometimes name characters after what they are, like Rabbit and Bird. A creative enrichment activity invites students to imagine a new "giving" friend for the Snowman and write about how that character would help others, extending the story's message of kindness and generosity in a fun, imaginative way.
