Oxford Dolphin Readers. Level Three. Wonderful Wild. Animals. Fiona Kenshole.
Illustrated by Simon Smith. DESCRIPTION. In this book we meet several ...
Oxford Dolphin Readers Level Three
Wonderful Wild Animals Fiona Kenshole Illustrated by Simon Smith
DESCRIPTION In this book we meet several different wild animals. We see where they live, what they like and don’t like, and what they need. CROSS-CURRICULAR Science: animals and their habitats. VALUES Appreciation for the needs of different wild animals. LANGUAGE Vocabulary: anywhere, bat, bear, camel, clever, comfortable, crocodile, desert, dolphin, duck, elephant, fire, flat, great, hump, mouse, mud, nest, night, parents, penguin, perfect, porcupine, quickly, sand, snow, spine, squirrel, tired, trunk, umbrella, unhappy, wait, warm, watchdog, weather, wild.
Expressions: Wow!, It’s… (to describe weather), I wish…
1
Level Three
Structures: Contractions (can’t, doesn’t, don’t, it’s, that’s, what’s), adjectivenoun placement with one, two or three adjectives.
Lesson Plan BEFORE 1 Write up an animal word on the board, along with a picture, for example, CAT. Ask the children, ‘What do you know about a cat?‘ ‘What is it?’ (a bird, mammal, reptile, etc.) ‘What is it like?’ (Use has got to describe it.) ‘Where does it live/ sleep?’ ‘What does it eat?’ Elicit the answers from the children and write them on the board. Play a guessing game with some familiar animals (fish, cow, horse, etc). One child comes to the front of the class. Write an animal word on the board where the child can’t see it. The other children say clues about the animal until the child at the front guesses what animal it is. Examples: It lives in the…, It is (a bird, mammal, etc.), It has got (…legs, wings, a tail, etc.), It eats… Draw their attention to the sentences written about the cat to help them say their clues. 2 Show the cover of the book. Say the title and get the children to repeat it. Say ‘In this book we are going to learn about many different wild animals. Do you know what wild animals are?‘ Explain or elicit the meaning of wild animals (live in nature, do not live with humans). Look at the examples from the game and get the children to say if the animals are wild or not wild. Ask ‘Do you know any other wild animals? What animals do you think we will see in this book?‘ Elicit names of other wild animals the children know and write them on the board.
DURING 1 Give out the books and say ‘Have a look through your books. See if you know the names of any of the wild animals in this book. See if any of the animals we wrote on the board are in the book.‘ After a few minutes, stop and let the children say the names of the animals they know. Check their predictions before reading. 2 Read the story with expression while the students follow along, marking the difference between the questions, exclamations and sentences. 3 Stop occasionally to check difficult or new vocabulary, such as ‘watchdog’, ‘flat’, and ‘comfortable’.
AFTER 1 Play the guessing game above, but with the animals from the book. There are ten animals in the book. Prepare five sets of cards with the animal words on them. In groups of four or five, children take an animal card, but do not show it to the others. The children have to ask questions to guess what animal each person has (see examples above, which can be written on the board). 2 Get students to read the text again, but chorally, with half the class reading the black text and half reading the red. You may need to read aloud with them to model the correct intonation. Students can read again on other days in pairs or in small groups as you listen to them read. 3 Mini-lesson: Contractions. On the board write ‘I don’t like football. A cat isn’t a wild animal’. Circle the contractions and ask the children ‘What does this word mean?‘ Elicit answers. Show how don’t means do not. Cross out the o in not and replace it with an apostrophe. Do the same with ‘isn’t’. Ask the children to work in pairs to think of other contractions they know and what the contractions mean. Collect ideas and write them on the board. Ask the students to find more contractions in the book (can’t, doesn’t, don’t, it’s, that’s, what’s) and to read the sentences containing these. Identify the words that make up the contractions. Students write the contraction and the symbol ‘=’ before the two words making up the contraction in their notebooks. They can write a new sentence with the contraction or copy the sentence from the book. Later you can play a game with four teams. One person from each team comes to the board. You say two words, for example, ‘does not’, and the two students try to write the contraction. The first person to get the answer correct wins a point for their team. 4 Pages 13, 14, and 21: Review the vocabulary with the students, before or after they complete the pages. Remind them to use the Picture Dictionary to help them.
5 Pages 16 -18: These pages contain interesting facts about animals. Page 16 may be a bit more difficult as the information is not given in the text. On page 17, you may want to give the students the first word of each sentence to make it easier. Find out more about elephants here: http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/mammals/elephant/Elephantcoloring.shtml More about camels: http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/mammals/camel/Camelcoloring.shtml More about crocodiles: http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/reptiles/crocodile/Amcrocprintout.shtml 6 Pages 15, 19 and 20: Students should be able to do these independently or in pairs, using the picture dictionary to help them with the vocabulary. On page 15, you may want students to write a sentence about polar bears with the words circled, e.g. Polar bears are big, strong, white and dangerous.
EXTRA PROJECT IDEA Animal Investigation Each student or pair of students can choose an animal to find out about. You may want to give students a list to choose from. An example can be done with an elephant, camel or crocodile (see pages 16 -18 and the recommended web pages). They need to answer these questions: ‘What is it?‘ (a bird, mammal, reptile, etc.) ‘What is it like?‘ (Use has got to describe it.) ‘Where does it live/ sleep?‘ ‘What does it eat?‘ Students can write the answers to these questions and illustrate them, or make a model of the animal in its habitat. Students can present their work in small groups or to the class. The work can be displayed in the school. Here are some helpful links about animals: http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/animals/ http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/web_games_trivia_animal.htm http://www.enchantedlearning.com/coloring/
