Hatchet Novel Study Unit Plan w/ Comprehension Questions & Vocabulary Activities

This comprehensive Hatchet Unit Plan is crafted to enhance your students' understanding of Gary Paulsen's novel. It provides a range of activities, including lesson plans, Hatchet vocabulary exercises, and engaging comprehension questions designed to captivate students' interest.

Our Hatchet novel study questions and writing tasks are structured to promote deep engagement with the text, ensuring that learners are not just passively reading but actively analyzing the narrative and themes.

Ideal for literature circles and book clubs, this Hatchet novel study is student-friendly and tailored to encourage participation even from reluctant readers. The unit eschews mundane chapter-by-chapter questions, opting instead for dynamic discussions and activities that delve into the core aspects of the story in an enjoyable format.

The package includes both printable materials and Google Slides for versatility, making it suitable for various learning environments. Dive into Gary Paulsen's wilderness adventure with our Hatchet lesson plans, and watch as your students explore, learn, and grow through this literary journey.

Your download includes:

✔Daily comprehension prompts in 3 formats for differentiation

• Foldable trifold brochures
• Cut & paste journal prompts for interactive notebooks
• Google Slides

✔Weekly word of the day flip books for text-based vocabulary

✔ Easy-to-follow directions for printing & prep

✔ Instructional planning guide

✔Answer keys

In this Hatchet Novel Unit you'll find:

1) Student comprehension practice (up to 20 instructional days)

• Each day's work focuses on a single standards-based comprehension skill
• Short, written responses include opportunities to apply thinking to text
• Designed with reluctant and struggling learners in mind
• Built-in graphic organizers to support skill acquisition
• Approachable questions help make connections & start conversations
• No boring multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blank questions!
• Available in both printable trifolds, reading journal prompts, and Google Slides

2) Approachable practice with key reading standards and skills including:

• Generating a summary of key events
• Text analysis from the perspective of self & characters
• Identification of cause and effect relationship
• Making inferences and drawing conclusions based on text clues
• Analyzing problems and solutions
• Examining character traits through plot
• Exploring the author's use of word choice & its impact on the reader
• And so much more!

3) Text-based & academic vocabulary

• One target word identified for each day's reading
• A flexible foldable format allows for the study and application of new vocabulary
• Opportunities to make connections to academic vocabulary for daily skills

4) Teacher support materials

• Unit scope & sequence lays out the day's comprehension & vocabulary focus
• Answer Keys for all comprehension activities
• Tips for preparation and implementation
• Instructions for digital Google Drive version

*Digital Access Note: This resource includes digital access via GOOGLE SLIDES. For the digital versions, you will need Internet access and a free Google account OR Google Classroom. Learners will work on computers or iPads. Upon purchasing, you will download documents containing links to the digital files, along with easy-to-follow instructions that will get you started in minutes! These are easily shared digitally between you and your students.

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How Novel Units from Differentiated Teaching Work...

▸ Teachers can introduce the day's vocabulary word & discuss before reading.

▸ Students complete just one section of the trifold or a single Google Slide each day.

▸ Daily work focuses on target skills needed for success in reading vs. plot recall.

▸ The low-pressure format provides novelty & encourages student engagement

▸ Less overwhelming to reluctant readers and writers

▸ Requires deep analysis and application of text-based knowledge

▸ Encourages discussion about skills & strategies

Here's why teachers love these novel units...

♥ We used these for a whole-class novel study. Pre-printed brochures fully encompassed ELA skills for the novel. This is an extremely easy, but very rich set of activities for understanding and enriching student's ELA skills. I will be using this for our first novel study again in class this fall. I highly recommend this! -Allison M.

♥ This has helped me so much in teaching Holes to my students this year. Other resources overwhelm students with too much vocabulary and literal comprehension questions but these slides give students one vocabulary word for each chapter and a grade-level higher-order comprehension skill to practice. - Kristin P.

♥ This does a really good job of focusing on vocab and using context clues, practicing quoting from the text, and target skills. I really liked the way it focused on one skill for every two chapters, which made things really manageable for my students. - Beth A.

Here's what homeschool families have to say about the novel studies...

★ I LOVE the layout and how it guides my son and I through our reading time. As a homeschool parent I still wanted to give him that opportunity to discuss and grapple with the text and I love this quick format as a brochure. I also love the vocab focus for each section and the skill listed so I can monitor his understanding of these as we move through a variety of texts this year. - Antonia S.

★ My kids LOVED this book companion. The vocabulary was rich, and I liked the focus on one word a day. I also liked that they had to use context clues rather than dictionary definitions... The tasks were a great review of skills I covered throughout the year. Parent-friendly and easy to implement. - Corinne M.

★ I am a homeschool mom and my daughter is enjoying the book and I am loving that she is able to respond to the reading through various aspects and not just answering questions. She is more engaged in her reading and asking more questions after she completes each task. - Terri B.

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Other novel studies available for Gary Paulsen books:

• Brian's Winter
• The River
• Mr. Tucket

Other Novel Study & Literature Circle Resources You Might Also Enjoy...

• The Wild Robot by Peter Brown
• Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
• Call it Courage by Armstrong Sperry
• Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell

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Terms of Use:

© Rebecca Davies. All rights reserved by the author. These materials are intended for personal use by a single classroom only. Copying for more than one teacher, classroom, department, school, or school system is prohibited. For use in multiple classrooms, please purchase additional licenses. This product may not be distributed or displayed digitally for public view. Failure to comply is a copyright infringement and a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Clipart and elements found in this PDF are copyrighted and cannot be extracted and used outside of this file without permission or license. See product file for clip art and font credits.