Celebrate the changing seasons with this engaging Rooted in Reading companion for The Leaf Thief by Alice Hemming! This week-long resource helps students look closely at what characters say and what it reveals about them, while strengthening comprehension, vocabulary, and grammar skills.

Over the course of 5 days, students will focus on character dialogue and character traits. Through discussions, anchor charts, dialogue bookmarks, response activities, and printables, students will notice who is speaking, how characters are feeling, and what their words tell us about the kind of characters they are.

Students will also read the paired nonfiction reader Trees, building background knowledge and making connections to the week's mentor text.

Vocabulary instruction focuses on the words snug, canopy, disaster, rustle, disturb, sigh, and hazelnut, giving students multiple opportunities to build word knowledge and understand vocabulary in context.

Each day includes a Daily Deep Dive featuring a mentor sentence from the story. Students use the sentence to practice close reading, editing, grammar, noticing how language works, and thinking deeply about meaning.

The week's grammar focus is subject-verb agreement, with practice building and sorting sentences so that subjects and verbs match.

This resource includes:

• 5 days of detailed lesson plans for comprehension, vocabulary, and grammar
• Comprehension lessons focused on character dialogue and character traits
• Comprehension focus posters, book question cards, and anchor chart templates
• Fiction reading passage, reading response activities, printables, and assessments
• Paired nonfiction reader and tree booklet activity
• Vocabulary activities featuring the week's targeted words
• Daily Deep Dive mentor sentence activities
• Grammar lessons and activities focused on subject-verb agreement