Dan Santat offers readers the chance to determine the importance of key details that lead to a deeper understanding of major events and Humpty Dumpty's emotions. After the Fall is riddled with text-based and illustrative details that makes this story an ideal choice for practicing this comprehension strategy.

Students will enjoy making many connections with After the Fall, finding links within the story itself, similarities to the original Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme, and connections to their own experiences and knowledge of the world. Readers can share in Humpty Dumpty's feelings of fear, accomplishment, and joy as the story evolves into a heart-warming tale of learning to get back up when life knocks you down.

The author and illustrator of After the Fall, Dan Santat, creates regular opportunities for readers to practice inference skills based on both text and illustrations. His purposeful choices in color scheme, writing, and story progression allow students to make inferences regarding Humpty Dumpty's emotions, decision-making, and his large transformation after this tale.

After the Fall: How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again lends itself to practicing this comprehension skill. Humpty Dumpty undergoes a series of changes throughout the epilogue tale, giving readers many opportunities to think deeply about how and why he changes. The story concludes with a large transformation in Humpty Dumpty's character, which provokes further thinking and questioning, and leads the reader to understand what it really means to "get back up again."

Throughout the story, readers will see Humpty Dumpty is faced with several problems as he learns how to confront his fears and find the solution. Both the text and illustrations within After the Fall give students numerous opportunities to identify various text structures. Students can see what caused Humpty Dumpty to transform at the end of the story, compare and contrast his feelings about the wall, provide detailed descriptions of the illustrations, and sequence the events leading up to the moment Humpty Dumpty must face his fear.

This word work lesson plan and set of teaching resources use After the Fall by Dan Santat as a springboard for instruction focused on syllables.

By anchoring word study to the text, students will benefit from seeing how two-syllable words are used inside of the text before engaging in both guided and independent practice with two-syllable words.

This resource includes matching/sorting cards and a sorting mat for four cause and effect sentences in After the Fall. Each cause card is marked with a square and each effect card is marked with a circle, making it easy to support students who struggle with matching cause and effect relationships.

Understanding cause and effect is a key comprehension and language skill. The text structure of After the Fall includes several examples of cause and effect relationships, making it easy to use as a springboard for modeling or independent practice.

This simple resource includes four sentence stems. Each sentence stem presents an effect. Students will use what they know about the book to fill in the cause of the effect.