Five-Minute Activities for Young Learners

What colour is it?
frog.
of five syllables, and the  
Green.
It jumps and opens
middle line consisting of 
What does the frog do?
its mouth.
seven syllables. This is not
It jumps and opens its 
Croak! Flies for
always possible in English, 
mouth.
dinner!
but provides a useful guide 
What does the frog say?
to writing Haiku.
Croak!
What does the frog eat?
Flies for dinner!
Follow-up
• Encourage the children to write their own Haiku by choosing another
animal. They could illustrate it and display it in the classroom.
• For other poems and tongue twisters, see Activities 4.5, 6.17.
1.7 Wild animals
Level
**
Language focus
Information report, definitions, simple present tense
Skills focus
Speaking
Thinking focus
Classifying
Teaching approach
Promote accuracy – correct errors
Interaction
Whole class work, suitable for large classes
Preparation
On the board, write the sentence stems from Box 7.
Procedure
1 Ask around the class for examples of animals in the wild. These can
range from insects to mammals, from fish to birds, from reptiles to
amphibians.
2 Each child in the class contributes an animal until they cannot think of
any others. Write all the suggestions randomly on the board.
Animals
15

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3 Taking a coloured pen or piece of chalk, circle two animals which belong
in the same category, e.g. a pig and a cat are mammals. Then ask the
children to suggest another animal that should be circled in this colour,
e.g. a mouse. If they cannot think of any, then keep circling mammals
until the children understand the reason for your choice.
4 Ask the children to use the sentence stems on the board to tell you why all
these animals belong together. See Box 7.
5 Then choose a different colour and circle an animal in a different
category, e.g. an insect.
6 Ask the children to choose other animals which fall into this category.
When they give their answer, ask them to tell you why they have chosen
this animal. (See Note.) The activity continues until all the children’s
suggestions have been categorised with different coloured circles.