Understanding Narrative with “The Cool Bean”

This group of students loved Jory John’s and Pete Oswald’s The Food Group Series. It’s great for teaching idiomatic language as well as socio-emotional concepts. In The Cool Bean, the main character learns that it is easier to make friends by being kind than by trying to look “cool.”

After an interactive read-aloud, the pupils engaged in a group discussion, then completed a guided writing activity that asked them to show the bean at the beginning and the end of the story.

As a bonus, all the Food Group books are read-alongs, meaning that they can be read by a narrator in the eBLINK library. That means they make excellent options for free voluntary reading!