Where The Wild Things Are Activities And Lesson Plans For 2022

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• ELEMENTARY TEACHING, LITERACY

Where the Wild Things Are Activities and Lesson Plans for 2026

Elementary teachers looking for lesson plans and activities for Where the Wild Things Are will love this post. It includes resource recommendations, teaching point ideas, and information about the book.

With themes of emotions and being respectful, this Where the Wild Things Are picture book by Maurice Sendak is a favorite in 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade classrooms. You and your students will love this classic story too!

Engage Your Students with Where the Wild Things Are Lesson Plans & Activities in 3 Easy Steps:

1. Read a summary of Where the Wild Things Are.
2. Check out the teaching ideas for reading comprehension strategies, grammar topics and social emotional learning skills that can be taught using this children’s book.
3. Download the book companion to make lesson planning simple with Where the Wild Things Are reading comprehension questions, writing prompts, teaching ideas & no-prep extension activities.

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WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE SUMMARY

Where the Wild Things Are is about a mischievous boy named Max. Max likes to wear his wolf costume and pretend to be a wild thing. Max gets sent to his room without dinner when he is rude to his mother and slowly his room turns into a forest and he travels to wear the wild things are.

When Max arrives where the wild things are they show him their terrible claws, roars, and gnash their terrible teeth. Max becomes king of the wild things and leads him in a rumpus. 

Max grows lonely and misses having someone who truly loves him so he returns home. His supper is waiting for him in his room and it is still warm. 

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE LESSON PLAN IDEAS

Each of our 400+ Starts With a Story book companions come with a teacher’s guide to make lesson planning quick and easy, printable worksheets and digital resources that cover ALL of the standards-based reading comprehension skills.

When it comes to writing lesson plans and finding activities for Where the Wild Things Are, we’ve already done all of the heavy lifting for you.

We found this book was especially good at teaching the topics listed below.

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READING COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS

The text-based Where the Wild Things Are reading comprehension questions focus on:

• summarize/retell 
• analyzing setting
• analyzing illustrations 
• making connections 

LITERATURE-BASED SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING LESSONS

We found this story to be a great SEL picture book to promote:

• emotions
• being respectful

GRAMMAR, VOCABULARY & WORD STUDY

• action verbs 
• adjectives 
• quotation marks

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE ACTIVITIES

You’ll receive all of the following resources aligned to the story:

• comprehension questions
• 30 writing prompts with themed paper
• vocabulary activities
• word study print & go activities
• ideas for grammar lessons with focus sentence printables
• social emotional learning discussion topics
• graphic organizers to target specific comprehension skills and strategies

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BOOK INFO FOR ELEMENTARY TEACHERS

What are the reading levels for Where the Wild Things Are?

• Lexile® Measure: AD740L
• Guided Reading Level: J
• DRA Level: 16 – 18
• Accelerated Reader Level (ARC): 4.5

Who is the author? Who is the illustrator?

The book was written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak.

What genre is Where the Wild Things Are?

It is an Adventure and Classics book. You may want to check out our genre activities or read our blog post, How to Teach Genre to Elementary Students.

How many pages are in the book?

The story is 48 pages long.

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