Charlotte's Web

Charlotte's Web by E.B. White is a must read beloved classic. This award-winning children's book is read and enjoyed in classrooms every single year! This loved book, along with these reading companion activities, will help students in First Grade, Second Grade, and Third Grade practice essential literacy and reading comprehension skills.

CHARLOTTE'S WEB BOOK ACTIVITIES AND TEACHING IDEAS

Charlotte's Web tells the story of a friendship between a spider named Charlotte and a pig named Wilbur, who live in the cellar of a barn. The book focusses on the themes of loyalty and friendship. It's a great novel for learning about character traits and feelings.

Charlotte's Web explores emotions, values, and relationships. These apply to both the human characters in the story (like Fern, Avery, the Zuckermans, and the Arables) as well as the animal characters in the story (like Charlotte the spider, Wilbur the pig, Templeton the rat, and the sheep and geese).

Wilbur the pig is worried that he is going to be killed and eaten when he gets bigger. Charlotte the spider devises a plan to save her best friend the pig.

Charlotte writes words in her spider webs that describe how wonderful Wilbur is. She uses words like some pig, terrific, and radiant. When the humans see these web messages hanging over Wilbur's pigpen, then are amazed. They believe the messages to be true of Wilbur, and Wilbur soon becomes famous.

As the story goes on, we see the characters develop more fully. While Wilbur still has his concerns, Charlotte assures him that he is safe because the 'gullible' humans believe what she writes about him.

The more Charlotte makes the humans think that Wilbur is special, the better he is treated. He gets more food, cleaner bedding, and lots of extra attention.

Fern visits Wilbur frequently in the barn cellar. She can understand the animals as they speak, and spends hours watching them. This worries her mother. Her father thinks she just has an active imagination.

Wilbur is entered into the County Fair. Charlotte makes her final message in her spider web. This message helps Wilbur and his owner to win a special prize.

Charlotte never returns back to the barn cellar with her friend. She passes away at the fair. Wilbur takes Charlotte's egg sac (filled with hundreds of her babies) back to the farm with him. He watches over it during the winter months so they are kept safe and warm.

In the spring, Charlotte's eggs hatch, and most of her babies float away in the breeze. But three of her daughters stay behind, where they keep Wilbur company and become his friends.

Wilbur never has to worry about being butchered by his owners. Charlotte has saved his life. He spends the rest of his days enjoying life in the barn, with generations of Charlotte's offspring.

This book study unit is packed with engaging activities that will help your First Grade, Second Grade, and Third Grade students with story elements, making predictions, character traits, making text to self connections, author's purpose, main idea, making inferences, vocabulary, writing, giving opinions and advice, problem and solution, story retell, reading comprehension, and much more!

These activities can be used for whole class instruction, during small group guided reading time, as individual student work, or as part of a book club. Copy a pack for each student and you're ready to go!

This Charlotte's Web book companion will save you tons of planning time, is no prep, and is great to leave for a sub!

Want to make sure you are hitting the reading standards for First Grade, Second Grade, or Third Grade? This resource includes ELA standards charts for Common Core, TEKS and VA SOL, showing you exactly which skills your students are learning while doing these activities!