The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street by Karina Yan Glaser Book Club Packet: Teacher/Parent Guide + Student Pages with Plans, Answer Keys, Reader's Theatre & Blooket Bonus (Grades 3-5)
Five kids, one grumpy landlord, and five days until Christmas.
BONUS INCLUDED: three ready-to-play Blooket review games! A 14-question game for Chapters 1-9, a 25-question cumulative game for Chapters 1-16 and a 37-question game for the whole book, with an answer key. In Blooket, choose Create, then Import from Spreadsheet, and you have a game night in minutes.
Sit back and enjoy this cozy Christmas read with your students as you use my No Prep The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street Book Club Packet. It is ONE download with everything the teacher or parent needs and every page the students print.
Karina Yan Glaser's The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street follows five kids in a Harlem brownstone who learn their family may have to move, and who set out on a secret plan to win over their grumpy landlord. It is warm and funny, and it carries big ideas about home, neighbors, kindness and forgiveness. Your readers will talk about this one.
This is my The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street BOOK CLUB edition, built for a classroom group, a homeschool co-op, or a club at your kitchen table. It comes in TWO parts inside one file: PART 1 is the Teacher/Parent Guide with the plans, discussion questions and every answer key, and PART 2 is the Student Pages you print for your readers. The question sets follow the book chapter by chapter, from Chapters 1-2 all the way to the Epilogue.
Plan it your way. The guide has a 4-week plan, a 3-session plan and a 2-session plan for 55-minute meetings. Start each meeting with the discussion questions, play Name That Character, and finish with a printable Book Club certificate and your Blooket game.
Leave the hard work to me! Print, read, talk, act out the Reader's Theatre script, and watch your kiddos fall in love with this book.
Covers the following Reading skills:
. Recalling key details and facts from the story
. Finding text evidence to support an answer
. Character traits, character sketch and a character analysis essay outline
. Putting story events in order
. Identifying literary devices and explaining what they mean
. Making a prediction
. Speaking and listening through discussion and Reader's Theatre
Reading level and fit: Grades 3-5. The book is longer than many club books (23 chapters plus an Epilogue), so plan on 1 to 1.5 hours of reading between meetings.
Content note: Please preview. The landlord is intimidating and yells at the kids, a character's wife and daughter died in an accident years ago, there is mild slang and potty humor (mostly about the dog), a girl hits a bully who mocks her sister, and there is a light middle-school crush. Kindness wins out and the ending is warm. Common Sense Media rates the book 8 and up.
Created by Kim Baust, "The Literature Lady," founder of YSA Homeroom by The Young Scholar Academy (online).
The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street comes with 10 question sets that follow the book chapter by chapter, plus discussion questions with "listen for" notes, so the story gets talked about as well as read.A story kids cannot put down is half the job. The other half is getting them to think about it. Chapter by chapter questions send students back into the text, and the talking that follows is where understanding grows. The What Works Clearinghouse practice guide for upper elementary and up recommends exactly that mix: extended discussion of what a text means, plus direct teaching of comprehension strategies. You bring the book and the conversation. Leave the planning to me.
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Hi, I’m Kim! I’m an educator with a Bachelor’s and Master’s in Elementary Education and more than 30 years of classroom experience.
I started The Literature Lady because I wanted to make reading come alive for students—and make lesson planning a lot easier for teachers. I create resources that were way too time-consuming to create while teaching full-time, so that now you don’t have to! My passion is creating engaging, low-prep resources, such as novel studies, Word Noodle vocabulary games, and reader’s theatre scripts, that help kids fall in love with books while building real skills.
When I’m not writing or designing new lessons, you’ll find me teaching right here on the TeacherStore.io community platform! The Young Scholar Academy is an online small group learning community that teaches homeschool students in grades 1-8. We teach core classes, electives, one-on-one tutoring, and so much more! As Tiffany would say, "Come for the classes, stay for the community!"
I am also a fun of reading, baking, traveling, or hanging out with my husband, our two college-aged sons, and our dogs, Maisie and Sophie.












