Children will begin asking questions as soon as they open Tomie de Paola's delightful book. The illustrations and silly circumstances compel readers to wonder about the character's intentions throughout the story.

The important events in "Strega Nona" are clearly mapped out, making this the perfect book for practicing determining importance. Determining key events and characters will help children remember the story of Big Anthony, Strega Nona, and the magic pot.

Use this lesson plan and set of resources to show readers how to make predictions while reading Strega Nona. Children will have fun predicting the trouble Big Anthony causes with a magic pot that won't stop making pasta.

Strega Nona is the perfect springboard for a mini lesson focused on retelling and summarizing. Engaging illustrations that enrich the text will support children as they identify the most important story elements in order to summarize this timeless plot.

Use this resource set to teach students about text structures. Tomie dePaola uses different text structures to tell the story of what could happen when you don't listen. Children will anticipate a solution to the problem, and they will enjoy the amusing ending.

This word work lesson plan and set of teaching resources use Strega Nona by Tomie dePaola as a springboard for instruction focused on vowels.

By anchoring word study to the text, students will benefit from seeing how short vowels are used inside of the text before engaging in both guided and independent practice with words.

This set of vocabulary development resources for Strega Nona highlights the words that are most important for students to know and understand while reading the book. Through engaging in fun word games, matching words to definitions and pictures, and practicing how to categorize words, students will develop the vocabulary necessary to comprehend this story and many others.

Use this Running Record to assess oral reading fluency with Strega Nona. Track meaning, structure, and visual accuracy using the first 100 words of the text to determine whether or not this book is a good fit for the readers in your classroom.

Use this Common Core aligned comprehension assessment to evaluate students' comprehension of Strega Nona.

Read Strega Nona then have some fun matching cause and effect sentences from the book. By using these cause and effect cards, students will demonstrate both their comprehension of the text and their understanding of cause and effect relationships in hands-on and interactive way.

This resource includes matching/sorting cards and a sorting mat for four cause and effect sentences in Strega Nona. Each cause card is marked with a square and each effect card is marked with a circle, making it easy to support students who struggle with matching cause and effect relationships.

Understanding cause and effect is a key comprehension and language skill. The text structure of Strega Nona includes several examples of cause and effect relationships, making it easy to use as a springboard for modeling or independent practice.

This simple resource includes four sentence stems. Each sentence stem presents an effect. Students will use what they know about the book to fill in the cause of the effect.

The BookPagez extension activities are a great way to push student engagement beyond the pages of the text. Try using this activity with early finishers, with students who show a deeper connection with the text, or as a center activity.