The Snake Olympics gold medalists!
Interview with a panel of snake experts
Use The Snake Olympics as a reference to fill in the data chart below. Name of the event
Who won this event?
Lesson Plans
Activity card
Blackline master
What did the snake do to win this event?
You will need: safety pins for name cards, props (costumes and construction materials to make microphones, charts, etc).
Early Fluent reading stage
What to do:
Level I (16)
1. In your group of four, decide who will take on each role. Cut out the name tags below, and write your names on them. 2. Write questions and answers for the interview. 3. Prepare any props (put on costumes, make microphones, organize seating, etc). 4. Practice your interview and present it to an audience.
✂
Snake Expert Professor
Expert on how snakes catch their food
Expert on how snakes kill their food
Interviewer
Flying Start to Literacy Lesson Plans Amazing Snakes / The Snake Olympics © 2010–2019 EC Licensing Pty Ltd.
Flying Start to Literacy Lesson Plans Amazing Snakes / The Snake Olympics © 2010–2019 EC Licensing Pty Ltd. Developed by Eleanor Curtain Publishing
© 2010–2019 EC Licensing Pty Ltd. This work is protected by copyright law, and under international copyright conventions, applicable in the jurisdictions in which it is published. The trademark “Flying Start to Literacy” and Star device is a registered trademark of EC Licensing Pty Ltd in the US. In addition to certain rights under applicable copyright law to copy parts of this work, the purchaser may make copies of those sections of this work displaying the footnote: “© 2010–2019 EC Licensing Pty Ltd”, provided that: (a) the number of copies made does not exceed the number reasonably required by the purchaser for its teaching purposes; (b) those copies are only made by means of photocopying and are not further copied or stored or transmitted by any means; (c) those copies are not sold, hired, lent or offered for sale, hire or loan; and (d) every copy made clearly shows the footnote copyright notice. All other rights reserved.
Running words: 454 Text type: Explanation
Running words: 524 Text type: Narrative
Content vocabulary
bodies catch death adder ears eat experiments fangs food gaboon viper green tree snake hearing heat-sensing hunt hunter/s jaws kill king cobra organs poison puff adder python rattlesnake scientists sense sight slither/ed snakes squeezing venom vibrations worm
Phonics
• I dentifying “ear” making the /ear/ sound as in ears, hear, hearing, nearby • Identifying “eer” making the /ear/ sound as in sneered
Text features Amazing Snakes
• Contents page, chapter headings, and sub-headings • Photographic summary chart
The Snake Olympics
• Dialogue • Cartoon-style illustrations
Reading strategies
• Connecting information • Using letter clusters to decode, scanning words from beginning to end
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills
Expert on how snakes eat their food
Can the student understand what information is needed to complete the data chart? Can the student find the relevant information in the text?
The Snake Olympics is a humorous narrative about a group of snakes that competes in a range of events at the Snake Olympics.
Snake Expert Professor
Snake Expert Professor
Assessment
Amazing Snakes explains how a range of snakes catch, kill, and eat their prey.
okapi
educational publishing
Text: Kerrie Shanahan and Lyn Reggett Consultants: Susan Hill and Jenny Feely Designed by Derek Schneider Printed in China through Colorcraft Ltd., Hong Kong Distributed in the USA by Okapi Educational Publishing Inc. Phone: 866-652-7436 Fax: 800-481-5499 Email: info@myokapi.com www.myokapi.com www.flying-start-to-literacy.com
Phonics 1(2) (B) (iii) Demonstrate and apply phonetic knowledge by: decoding words with closed syllables; open syllables; VCe syllables; vowel teams, including vowel digraphs and diphthongs; and r-controlled syllables. 1(2) (B) (vi) Demonstrate and apply phonetic knowledge by identifying and reading at least 100 high-frequency words from a research-based list. Reading 1(6) (F) Make inferences and use evidence to support understanding with adult assistance. 1(6) (H) Synthesize information to create new understanding with adult assistance. 1(6) (I) Monitor comprehension and make adjustments such as re-reading, using background knowledge, checking for visual cues, and asking questions when understanding breaks down.
Writing 1(12) (B) Dictate or compose informational texts, including procedural texts. Speaking and Listening 1(10) (C) Discuss with adult assistance the author’s use of print and graphic features to achieve specific purposes.
Lesson 1 Amazing Snakes
Lesson 2 The Snake Olympics
Key concepts • S nakes catch, kill, and eat animals. • Different types of snakes catch, kill, and eat their prey in different ways.
Returning to the book
Key concepts
Provide multiple opportunities for the students to reread and interact with the book – with teacher support, with a partner, and independently. Choose activities that are appropriate for your students.
• Snakes catch, kill, and eat animals. • Different types of snakes catch, kill, and eat their prey in different ways.
Returning to the book Provide multiple opportunities for the students to reread and interact with the book – with teacher support, with a partner, and independently. Choose activities that are appropriate for your students.
Developing fluency
Developing fluency In groups, students could act out the story. Encourage the students to read expressively, with appropriate intonation. Say: Try to make your voice sound like the voice of each character.
After reading
Students could work with a partner and take turns to read a page from the text. When finished, they could then make a positive comment about their partner’s reading, e.g. I liked the way you read the words smoothly. It was easy to hear and understand what you were reading.
Getting ready to read
Talking about the book
Word work
Support the students in activating their prior knowledge. Have students brainstorm a list of facts they know about snakes. Students could then share their lists. Use this information to fill in the first column of a KWL chart with the headings: What we know about snakes, What we want to know about snakes, and What we have learned about snakes. Ask: What things would you like to find out about snakes? Fill in the second column.
Have the students talk about the book. Promote discussion by choosing questions that are appropriate for your students. Ask them to support their thinking by referring to the photographs and the text in the book. What is amazing about the king cobra’s sight? How do snakes hear? Why does the death adder lie still and wiggle its tail? (Literal) Why do snakes have fangs of different shapes and sizes? Why do they have different ways of catching animals to eat? (Inferential) What is the same about all snakes? How do they differ from each other? (Synthesizing) How does this book make you feel about snakes? Why? (Critical)
Before reading
Vocabulary building Write the words hunter, scientists, experiments, poison, venom, king cobra, python, vibrations, death adder, and heat-sensing organs on cards. Invite students to pick one card at a time and to discuss, with the group, the meaning of the word on the card.
Introducing the book Give each student a copy of the book Amazing Snakes and have them read the title and the contents page. Ask: What do you already know about the information in this book? What do you think you will be learning in this book? Establish how the information is organized: catch, kill, eat. You could say: The book is organized into three chapters with the headings: Catching food, Killing food, and Eating food. Have the students prepare for reading by thinking and talking about the book with your support.
During reading Ask each student to read the text independently. Monitor the students as they read and support them where appropriate. If necessary, ask the students to stop reading and remind them to use the reading strategies you are focused on. For example, are the students connecting the information in each chapter with their prior knowledge? Ask: How does the information in this chapter fit together? What is the amazing thing about this snake?
Return to the KWL chart started in the Before reading section. Ask: What information have we learned about snakes? Add this new information to the last column on the chart.
Reviewing reading strategies Encourage students to identify what they did to help themselves as readers. Ask: What are some of the things you did that helped you make sense of this book? If appropriate, comment on how well the students connected the information in the book. For example, you could say: I noticed how you linked the information in each chapter.
ELL support • Subheadings summarize the chapter content. • Labeled photographs support the written text. • Summary chart summarizes each snake.
Before reading
After reading
Getting ready to read
Talking about the book
Write the word ear on the board. Say: What sound do you hear in this word? Ask students to talk with a partner about other words with the /ear/ sound represented by “ear”. Students could then look at Amazing Snakes and other familiar texts to find words with this letter/sound combination.
Support the students in activating their prior knowledge. Ask students to talk about the Olympics and the events that competitors can participate in. Say: Imagine there is an Olympics for snakes to compete in. What sort of events could snakes participate in? Make a list. What else do you know about the Olympics? Discuss students’ responses.
Exploring words
Vocabulary building
Students could use the word cards created during the Vocabulary building section to create sentences. Working with a partner, they could choose one word card at a time and take turns saying a sentence with that word in it. Pairs could then continue to choose new word cards and say sentences.
List on the board the events that the snakes in the book compete in (longest fangs, smartest hunter, best at hunting), and the names of the snakes (green tree snake, python, death adder, puff adder, gaboon viper, rattlesnake). Read the lists and say: These are the names of the snakes in the book and these are the events they will compete in. Which snake do you think will win each event?
Have the students talk about the book. Promote discussion by choosing questions that are appropriate for your students. Ask them to support their thinking by referring to the illustrations and the text in the book. What events did the snakes compete in? (Literal) Why was the judge of the longest fang competition nervous? (Inferential) What did you learn about snakes by reading this book? (Synthesizing) Why did the author choose snakes for this story? (Critical)
Phonics
Writing Students could draw and write about a snake they think is amazing. Encourage the students to use the book as support.
Sharing and presenting Students could take turns to sharing their writing about an amazing snake with a partner.
Introducing the book Give each student a copy of The Snake Olympics and have students read the title. Invite the students to predict what the book will be about. Ask: In a story about a Snake Olympics, what kind of events might snakes compete in? Refer students to the events on pages 8, 12, and 16. Say: Event 1 is to find which snake is best at hiding; event 2 to find which snake has the longest fangs; and event 3 which snake is the smartest hunter. Support the students as they prepare for reading by thinking and talking about the book.
Reviewing reading strategies Encourage students to identify what they did to help themselves as readers. Ask: What are some of the things you did that helped you make sense of this book? What strategies did you use?
ELL support • The title reflects the content. • Illustrations make clear the actions and feelings of
Word work Phonics Refer students to page 20 and read the sentence: “You won’t catch anything that way,” sneered the python. Ask: What does the word sneered mean? Discuss students’ responses. Ask: What letters make the /ear/ sound in this word? Write other words on the board with the letters “eer” making the /ear/ sound (cheer, deer, queer, career).
Exploring words Students could choose five words from the book and write each one on a card. Students could work with a partner to explain the meaning of one word at a time (without saying the actual word on the card). Have students keep giving clues until their partner can guess the word, and then have them change roles.
Writing Students could write a story about another type of animal Olympics, e.g. The Bat Olympics, The Shark Olympics, etc.
Sharing and presenting Students could sit in a small group and take turns reading their animal Olympics stories to each other.
each character.
During reading Ask each student to read the text independently. Monitor the students as they read and support them where appropriate. If necessary, ask the students to stop reading and remind them to use the reading strategies you are focused on. Say: What letters did you look at? How did this help you to decode the word? Remember that good readers read in chunks.
Synthesizing: Talk about the pair After students have read both Amazing Snakes and The Snake Olympics, ask: What amazing facts have you learned about snakes? What do you still want to know?
In small groups students could fill in a chart with the headings: Things that amazed us about snakes ..., and What we now wonder about snakes ...
The Snake Olympics gold medalists!
Interview with a panel of snake experts
Use The Snake Olympics as a reference to fill in the data chart below. Name of the event
Who won this event?
Lesson Plans
Activity card
Blackline master
What did the snake do to win this event?
You will need: safety pins for name cards, props (costumes and construction materials to make microphones, charts, etc).
Early Fluent reading stage
What to do:
Level I (16)
1. In your group of four, decide who will take on each role. Cut out the name tags below, and write your names on them. 2. Write questions and answers for the interview. 3. Prepare any props (put on costumes, make microphones, organize seating, etc). 4. Practice your interview and present it to an audience.
✂
Snake Expert Professor
Expert on how snakes catch their food
Expert on how snakes kill their food
Interviewer
Flying Start to Literacy Lesson Plans Amazing Snakes / The Snake Olympics © 2010–2019 EC Licensing Pty Ltd.
Flying Start to Literacy Lesson Plans Amazing Snakes / The Snake Olympics © 2010–2019 EC Licensing Pty Ltd. Developed by Eleanor Curtain Publishing
© 2010–2019 EC Licensing Pty Ltd. This work is protected by copyright law, and under international copyright conventions, applicable in the jurisdictions in which it is published. The trademark “Flying Start to Literacy” and Star device is a registered trademark of EC Licensing Pty Ltd in the US. In addition to certain rights under applicable copyright law to copy parts of this work, the purchaser may make copies of those sections of this work displaying the footnote: “© 2010–2019 EC Licensing Pty Ltd”, provided that: (a) the number of copies made does not exceed the number reasonably required by the purchaser for its teaching purposes; (b) those copies are only made by means of photocopying and are not further copied or stored or transmitted by any means; (c) those copies are not sold, hired, lent or offered for sale, hire or loan; and (d) every copy made clearly shows the footnote copyright notice. All other rights reserved.
Running words: 454 Text type: Explanation
Running words: 524 Text type: Narrative
Content vocabulary
bodies catch death adder ears eat experiments fangs food gaboon viper green tree snake hearing heat-sensing hunt hunter/s jaws kill king cobra organs poison puff adder python rattlesnake scientists sense sight slither/ed snakes squeezing venom vibrations worm
Phonics
• I dentifying “ear” making the /ear/ sound as in ears, hear, hearing, nearby • Identifying “eer” making the /ear/ sound as in sneered
Text features Amazing Snakes
• Contents page, chapter headings, and sub-headings • Photographic summary chart
The Snake Olympics
• Dialogue • Cartoon-style illustrations
Reading strategies
• Connecting information • Using letter clusters to decode, scanning words from beginning to end
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills
Expert on how snakes eat their food
Can the student understand what information is needed to complete the data chart? Can the student find the relevant information in the text?
The Snake Olympics is a humorous narrative about a group of snakes that competes in a range of events at the Snake Olympics.
Snake Expert Professor
Snake Expert Professor
Assessment
Amazing Snakes explains how a range of snakes catch, kill, and eat their prey.
okapi
educational publishing
Text: Kerrie Shanahan and Lyn Reggett Consultants: Susan Hill and Jenny Feely Designed by Derek Schneider Printed in China through Colorcraft Ltd., Hong Kong Distributed in the USA by Okapi Educational Publishing Inc. Phone: 866-652-7436 Fax: 800-481-5499 Email: info@myokapi.com www.myokapi.com www.flying-start-to-literacy.com
Phonics 1(2) (B) (iii) Demonstrate and apply phonetic knowledge by: decoding words with closed syllables; open syllables; VCe syllables; vowel teams, including vowel digraphs and diphthongs; and r-controlled syllables. 1(2) (B) (vi) Demonstrate and apply phonetic knowledge by identifying and reading at least 100 high-frequency words from a research-based list. Reading 1(6) (F) Make inferences and use evidence to support understanding with adult assistance. 1(6) (H) Synthesize information to create new understanding with adult assistance. 1(6) (I) Monitor comprehension and make adjustments such as re-reading, using background knowledge, checking for visual cues, and asking questions when understanding breaks down.
Writing 1(12) (B) Dictate or compose informational texts, including procedural texts. Speaking and Listening 1(10) (C) Discuss with adult assistance the author’s use of print and graphic features to achieve specific purposes.
The Snake Olympics gold medalists!
Interview with a panel of snake experts
Use The Snake Olympics as a reference to fill in the data chart below. Name of the event
Who won this event?
Lesson Plans
Activity card
Blackline master
What did the snake do to win this event?
You will need: safety pins for name cards, props (costumes and construction materials to make microphones, charts, etc).
Early Fluent reading stage
What to do:
Level I (16)
1. In your group of four, decide who will take on each role. Cut out the name tags below, and write your names on them. 2. Write questions and answers for the interview. 3. Prepare any props (put on costumes, make microphones, organize seating, etc). 4. Practice your interview and present it to an audience.
✂
Snake Expert Professor
Expert on how snakes catch their food
Expert on how snakes kill their food
Interviewer
Flying Start to Literacy Lesson Plans Amazing Snakes / The Snake Olympics © 2010–2019 EC Licensing Pty Ltd.
Flying Start to Literacy Lesson Plans Amazing Snakes / The Snake Olympics © 2010–2019 EC Licensing Pty Ltd. Developed by Eleanor Curtain Publishing
© 2010–2019 EC Licensing Pty Ltd. This work is protected by copyright law, and under international copyright conventions, applicable in the jurisdictions in which it is published. The trademark “Flying Start to Literacy” and Star device is a registered trademark of EC Licensing Pty Ltd in the US. In addition to certain rights under applicable copyright law to copy parts of this work, the purchaser may make copies of those sections of this work displaying the footnote: “© 2010–2019 EC Licensing Pty Ltd”, provided that: (a) the number of copies made does not exceed the number reasonably required by the purchaser for its teaching purposes; (b) those copies are only made by means of photocopying and are not further copied or stored or transmitted by any means; (c) those copies are not sold, hired, lent or offered for sale, hire or loan; and (d) every copy made clearly shows the footnote copyright notice. All other rights reserved.
Running words: 454 Text type: Explanation
Running words: 524 Text type: Narrative
Content vocabulary
bodies catch death adder ears eat experiments fangs food gaboon viper green tree snake hearing heat-sensing hunt hunter/s jaws kill king cobra organs poison puff adder python rattlesnake scientists sense sight slither/ed snakes squeezing venom vibrations worm
Phonics
• I dentifying “ear” making the /ear/ sound as in ears, hear, hearing, nearby • Identifying “eer” making the /ear/ sound as in sneered
Text features Amazing Snakes
• Contents page, chapter headings, and sub-headings • Photographic summary chart
The Snake Olympics
• Dialogue • Cartoon-style illustrations
Reading strategies
• Connecting information • Using letter clusters to decode, scanning words from beginning to end
Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills
Expert on how snakes eat their food
Can the student understand what information is needed to complete the data chart? Can the student find the relevant information in the text?
The Snake Olympics is a humorous narrative about a group of snakes that competes in a range of events at the Snake Olympics.
Snake Expert Professor
Snake Expert Professor
Assessment
Amazing Snakes explains how a range of snakes catch, kill, and eat their prey.
okapi
educational publishing
Text: Kerrie Shanahan and Lyn Reggett Consultants: Susan Hill and Jenny Feely Designed by Derek Schneider Printed in China through Colorcraft Ltd., Hong Kong Distributed in the USA by Okapi Educational Publishing Inc. Phone: 866-652-7436 Fax: 800-481-5499 Email: info@myokapi.com www.myokapi.com www.flying-start-to-literacy.com
Phonics 1(2) (B) (iii) Demonstrate and apply phonetic knowledge by: decoding words with closed syllables; open syllables; VCe syllables; vowel teams, including vowel digraphs and diphthongs; and r-controlled syllables. 1(2) (B) (vi) Demonstrate and apply phonetic knowledge by identifying and reading at least 100 high-frequency words from a research-based list. Reading 1(6) (F) Make inferences and use evidence to support understanding with adult assistance. 1(6) (H) Synthesize information to create new understanding with adult assistance. 1(6) (I) Monitor comprehension and make adjustments such as re-reading, using background knowledge, checking for visual cues, and asking questions when understanding breaks down.
Writing 1(12) (B) Dictate or compose informational texts, including procedural texts. Speaking and Listening 1(10) (C) Discuss with adult assistance the author’s use of print and graphic features to achieve specific purposes.