In Can I Be Your Dog?, students explore Troy Cummings' playful writing style and meaningful message about kindness and persistence. Through guided questions, students will analyze Arfy's letters, his emotional journey, and the surprise ending to uncover the author's purpose. By examining word choices, tone, and structure, readers learn how the author uses humor and heart to inspire compassion for homeless animals.

This resource set helps students practice making inferences by focusing on Arfy's thoughts, feelings, and actions throughout the story. Using text and vivid illustrations, students will infer how Arfy reacts to rejection, what motivates him to keep trying, and how he feels when someone finally writes a kind letter back. These exercises help readers connect emotions, visual cues, and dialogue to deepen their understanding of the story.

As Arfy writes one hopeful letter after another, students are invited to make predictions about who might adopt him and what will happen next. With scaffolded prompts that encourage evidence-based thinking, students learn how to use clues from the text and illustrations to make thoughtful guesses. This strategy supports active reading and keeps students engaged as they anticipate the ending of Arfy's journey.

This word work lesson plan and set of teaching resources use Can I Be Your Dog? by Troy Cummings as a springboard for instruction focused on syllables.

By anchoring word study to the text, students will benefit from seeing how 3-syllable words are used inside of the text before engaging in both guided and independent practice with syllables.

This set of vocabulary development resources for Can I Be Your Dog? 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.

Understanding cause and effect is a key comprehension and language skill. The text structure of Can I Be Your Dog? 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.

Read Can I Be Your Dog? 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 a hands-on and interactive way.

This resource includes matching/sorting cards and a sorting mat for four cause and effect sentences in Can I Be Your Dog?. 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.

In Can I Be Your Dog?, Arfy the dog writes letters to everyone on Butternut Street, asking for a home. Through his heartfelt notes, students see themes of kindness, hope, and belonging. In this interactive activity, children will design an adoption poster to show off a real or imagined pet. As they write, draw, and share their ideas, they'll practice persuasive writing and learn how words and creativity can inspire others. A wonderful way to build empathy, strengthen writing skills, and celebrate the joy of finding a forever friend!