The main character in Big Pumpkin is a witch with a big problem to solve. That's why this book is the perfect anchor text for students learning to ask questions while reading. Use mini lesson and set of resources to guide students towards asking questions that will help them to become better readers.

The witch's relateable problem and the bat's smart solution make Big Pumpkin an ideal choice for beginning readers. When paired with this mini lesson and set of resources students will learn to connect the books they read to their lives, the world, and to other texts.

This set of resources focuses on Erica Silverman's use of expressive language, which makes Big Pumpkin an ideal choice for students working on inferring the meaning of words. Coupled with S.D. Schindler's classic illustrations students will also practice making meaningful inferences based on the pictures in the book.

The repetitive storyline in Big Pumpkin coupled with the unpredictable solution to the witch's problem makes this a smart text to use with students who are both learning and practicing how to make predictions while reading.

Big Pumpkin is the perfect Halloween read aloud for a mini lesson focused on retelling and summarizing. When paired with the BookPagez resources, Erica Silverman's repetitive text and limited cast of characters make it easy for students to identify basic story elements and important events.

This word work lesson plan and set of teaching resources use Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman as a springboard for instruction focused on suffixes.

By anchoring word study to the text, students will benefit from seeing how inflectional ending -ed is used inside of the text before engaging in both guided and independent practice with inflectional endings.

This set of vocabulary development resources for Big Pumpkin highlights the words that are most important for students to know and understand while reading the book.  Through engaging in fun word games, matching words to definitions and pictures, and practicing how to categorize words, students will develop the vocabulary necessary to comprehend this story and many others.

Use this Common Core aligned comprehension assessment to evaluate students' comprehension of Big Pumpkin.

Use this Running Record to assess oral reading fluency with Big Pumpkin. Track meaning, structure, and visual accuracy using the first 100 words of the text to determine whether or not this book is a good fit for the readers in your classroom.

Read Big Pumpkin then have some fun matching cause and effect sentences from the book. By using these cause and effect cards, students will demonstrate both their comprehension of the text and their understanding of cause and effect relationships in hands-on and interactive way.

This resource includes matching/sorting cards and a sorting mat for four cause and effect sentences in Big Pumpkin. 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 Big Pumpkin 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.

The BookPagez extension activities are a great way to push student engagement beyond the pages of the text. Try using this activity with early finishers, with students who show a deeper connection with the text, or as a center activity.