Encourage your students to dive deeper into the story of Dasher by using text and illustration clues to make inferences about the characters and events. From understanding Dasher's feelings in the circus to interpreting Santa's reaction when they meet, this heartwarming story offers ample opportunities to practice inferential thinking. By focusing on this strategy, students will develop a deeper understanding of the story's themes and connect with the characters in meaningful ways.

The twists and turns of Dasher make it a perfect resource for teaching students how to make thoughtful predictions. Will Dasher find her way to the North Star? How will Santa respond when she tells him about her family? With its engaging plot and emotional depth, Dasher encourages readers to use context clues and their imaginations to anticipate what might happen next, helping them stay actively engaged with the story.

Dasher's journey from the circus to the North Pole is filled with key events that make Dasher an ideal text for practicing retelling and summarizing. Students will recount how Dasher longs for a life of freedom, bravely follows her dreams, and helps Santa create his sleigh team. Retelling her adventure helps students strengthen their sequencing skills, while summarizing allows them to focus on the main ideas and central message of the story: the importance of courage and family.

This word work lesson plan and set of teaching resources use Dasher by Matt Tavares as a springboard for instruction focused on long A patterns without magic e.

By anchoring word study to the text, students will benefit from seeing how vowels are used inside of the text before engaging in both guided and independent practice with long A sound.

This set of vocabulary development resources for Dasher 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.

Read Dasher 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 Dasher. 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 Dasher 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.

In Dasher: How a Brave Little Doe Changed Christmas Forever, Dasher had a special wish that changed her life. With this activity, students can reflect on Dasher's wish and write about their own holiday wish. They'll share what makes their wish meaningful and connect it to the story's themes of hope and bravery.