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"Checkouts" by Cynthia Rylant is one of my absolute favorite short stories to use during Valentine's Day season each year :)
 
This story and resource are short and sweet, great for quick insight on where your students are as far as reading comprehension and work ethic, and a fun read for the kids as well.
 
Instead of just a regular reading comprehension worksheet, this interactive slide deck has 8 activities to review the short story including a:
- Prompt for an ideal shopping spree
- Characterization graphic organizer
- Slide with 4 open-ended comprehension/critical thinking questions
- Prompt for an ideal "meet cute"
- Word search (8 words significant in the story)
- Prompt for explaining/defending the significance of the words in the word search
- Prompt for writing 2 theme-based haikus
- Prompt for writing an alternate ending