Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt is a wonderful choice for your next 6th-grade novel study or for intervention-level 7th- and 8th-grade readers. Your students will be on the edge of their seats waiting to see what happens to Winnie Foster and her adventures after encountering the Tuck family!
Emergency ELA Sub Plans
🎁 Join my email list for a free set of my ELA Sub Plans!
This is an excellent novel for middle school character, plot, and setting analysis. I have taught Tuck Everlasting in my classroom several times. All of the lesson plans and novel study activities featured here are included in my Tuck Everlasting novel study. This PDF download features over 50 pages of daily lesson plans, reading comprehension questions, context clue worksheets, and journal prompts.
Novel Study Ideas and Activities
I use a similar lesson plan structure for all of the novels we read together in class. I start each day with a discussion of the assigned reading. For my favorite chapters, I highlight a couple of pages to read aloud before beginning our discussion.
My standard pace for novel studies starts each day with a review of the setting of our reading selection, which in this case is a rural area in the heat of summer. This helps students connect right from the start with their experiences on hot days. Classroom discussions like this help students hear how their peers interpret and connect with the story.
Vocabulary and Word Work
Instead of handing out a list of vocabulary words from the novel to memorize, I use context clue worksheets that require students to return to the text and decipher a word’s meaning. Using context clues is an important skill they need to practice for state testing. My Tuck Everlasting novel unit includes 5 context clue worksheets with about 40 different words.
Character Analysis
Because Winnie and Tuck have had very different life experiences, I like to focus some activities on studying their character perspectives. Character study helps students develop empathy and perspective so they can become more fluent readers.
The image above shows a couple of my standard character analysis worksheets. The goal is to have students think about the story from the main characters’ perspectives and how they differ from one another.
More Ideas for Tuck Everlasting
In addition to the novel study activities I highlighted above, my novel study unit includes all the essential reading comprehension components, plus other great activities. Here is the full list…
- Chapter by Chapter Lesson Plans
- Chapter by Chapter Reader Response Questions
- Character Analysis Worksheet
- Figurative Language Activity
- Reflection Journal Prompts
- Character Companions: End of Novel Activity
- Teacher Answer Key
I hope you find a few ideas here to help you read this book with your class. Check out the following links for more examples of novel study activities I use with my middle school students…
