Charlotte’s Web Activities in a Special Education Classroom

Looking for Charlotte’s Web activities? Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White is a favorite chapter book to start with in elementary school. This is a great choice for special education classrooms as well, especially if you are looking for one to read aloud.

Reading novels aloud is a powerful tool to add to your lesson plans. Even if some of your students struggle to follow along and comprehend what you are reading, they will still learn valuable skills, like:

How to sit still in a group
How to not be distracting to others
To watch the person/teacher who is talking
How to ask for a break appropriately if needed
How to listen for the main idea or something that they are familiar with

For students who can follow along, but struggle when it comes to relaying what they have learned, the key is to find activities that relate to the chapter but do not require perfect recall or comprehension.

Here are some ideas for Charlotte’s Web activities that all of your students will be excited and able to do. (and you can download them right here to use in your classroom!)

1. Circle Map on Pigs

Circle maps are a great way for students to “draw” a picture about a topic. In this activity, which goes perfectly with Chapter 2, students will fill in a circle map about pigs.

Even if they did not understand everything you read aloud in the chapter, they can still complete this activity.

It is also important to structure the activity in a way that all students, regardless of their learning level will be able to complete it.

Circle maps can be easily modified to these levels:

Errorless: only the correct answers are provided. Students will cut out and glue all the images into the circle map.
Wrong answers mixed in: students will have to set aside the images that do not relate to the circle map, in this case, facts about pigs.
Advanced: students are given the circle map with no pictures, and they must come up with their own ideas, either from the novel or another source, to complete the circle map.

You can download this circle map on pigs right here.

🐷 Circle map on pigs

There are a lot of animals in this book, so you can use this same activity for:

Geese
Rats
Spiders
Crickets

2. Farm and Zoo Animal Sorting

Another great activity for Charlotte’s Web is to allow students to sort farm and zoo animals and will work perfectly with Chapter 12.

They can do this either using pictures you provide, or you can have them look through magazines or other material for their own pictures.

Again, we will want to be able to quickly differentiate this so all students can complete the same activity.

For those who need the most support, add color coding. You will outline the farm symbol in one color and the zoo symbol in another. Then, color in the animals the same color that would go in each column. This turns your animal sorting activity into a color sorting activity.

You can read more about color-coding in my blog post, How to Use Color–Coded Worksheets in Any Classroom.

For more advanced students, you will give them the sorting template with no pictures and allow them to come up with their own ideas for animals to put in each column.

You can download this activity right here.

🐷Farm/Zoo Animal Sorting Activity

There are plenty of other sorting activities you can do with this book as well.

season sorting
things that stink or smell good
tools a doctor or carpenter would use

3. Humble Word Map

Sometimes a chapter will use a word that is important to the story but may be unfamiliar to the students. In Chapter 18, Charlotte decides to weave the word humble into her web to describe Wilbur.

A word map is an errorless activity that identifies synonyms or common words that students can refer to when learning a new word.

Word maps are one activity I like to do BEFORE reading the chapter rather than after.

For your more advanced students, you can have them write in or research similar words to describe the word in the middle.

You can download this activity right here.

🐷 Humble Word Map

I use word maps A LOT, and not just when reading novels. Any time you come across a word that may be challenging but important for your students to know, have them do a word map.

Then, keep that word map close by for reference as you continue through the material.

I hope these Charlotte’s Web activities have encouraged you to read a novel aloud to your students. It may not go smoothly the very first time, but with some practice, I bet it will become your students’ favorite part of the day.

If you are interested in the complete novel unit for Charlotte’s Web, click on the button below. It has 22 different activities as well as comprehension questions for each chapter.