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Photograph © Kathie Atkinson
Animal Clues (Grades K–2)
Informazing series
How good is your knowledge of animals? On each page is a puzzle to solve. Look carefully at the pictures and read the clues. Can you guess the animal's name? When you have guessed, turn the page for the answer.
Grade level K–2
Visual literacy
Photographs: to provide clues and answers in a guessing game; and to research information.
Table: to record questions for investigation when reading the book; and to answer those questions.
Subject areas
English/Language Arts
- Questions and statements: use of question mark and period (full stop), use of initial capital letters.
- Making notes when reading nonfiction.
- Writing your own puzzle book.
Science/Technology
- Animal features and how they are used. How animals use their claws, tongues, eyes, shells, wings, feet, silk, and so on.
- What different animals eat, and how they catch their prey.
Mathematics
- Symmetry, as seen in animal bodies.
- Pairing and counting of animal legs, wings and claws, as shown in the photographs.
Learning strategies
Close observation of detail in photographs is a basic research skill. Children learn this in the context of playing a problem-solving game.
Research practice using photographs.
Modeled writing: children write their own puzzle book, modeled on Animal Clues.
Samples from the book
This is a guessing book in which children turn the page for the answer. To see how this works on our website, follow these rules:
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Informazing is a science/ literacy series for K–6 by David Drew
Titles in this series: Animal Acrobats Animal Clues Animal, Plant, or Mineral? The Book of Animal Records Caterpillar Diary Earth in Danger The Gas Giants The Life of the Butterfly Millions of Years Ago Mystery Monsters Postcards from the Planets Skeletons Somewhere in the Universe Tadpole Diary What Is It? |
How to play:
1. Read the clues.
2. Look at the photographs closely.
3. Guess the answer.
4. Roll over the photo with your mouse to see if you are right.
Photographs © Kathie Atkinson
Did you roll over the photographs with your mouse? If you did, you would have seen the answer: "crab."
Before going on to the next page, talk with the children about the photos. This is called a "spanner crab." A spanner is another word for wrench. What part of the animal is like a wrench? (Its claw, on page 5) How does a crab use its claw? (To catch its food.) Talk about the symmetry of the crab on page 6.
Photographs © C.A. Henley/Auscape
Photographs are visual texts that emphasize surface color and texture. In explanations and descriptive texts close-up photographs invite us to interpret fine surface detail such as the overlapping "roof tiles" on a butterfly's wing (below).
Photographs © Kathie Atkinson
Animal Clues offers many opportunities to generate questions for further research, such as, "How does a butterfly use its tongue?" (It can unroll its tube-like tongue and use it to drink nectar.)
Photographs © Kathie Atkinson
Photographs can be rich in visual information. Take every opportunity to point out the details in the photographs. Ask "Does the silk emerge in one or in several strands?" (The photograph shows many strands.) Ask the children to count the legs on the spider. (Can't see the legs? Roll over the photos with your mouse.)
Ideas to get you started
Even young children can do research
Step 1
Before showing the book, make a list of questions that can be answered by looking closely at the photographs in it. Here are some possible questions:
- Do spiders have six legs?
- Do grasshoppers have wings?
- How many toes do frogs have?
- Do lizards have eyelids?
- Which
animal has its mouth in the middle of its body?
and so on.
Write this list on a large sheet of paper that everyone can see as you read the book. Refer to your list as you read, and write in the answers as you go. Leave space for the answers. It's best if you make the list as a two-column table, ensuring that there is plenty of space for the answers. This also shows children a practical use for tables when recording information.
Step 2
In this case making notes is all part of the game of guessing the answer, but writing-as-we-read is also a valuable research strategy. Here's how it's done using the Big Book version of Animal Clues.
1. Use two classroom easels or Big Book stands. Place the book on one of these, and clip some large sheets of blank paper to the other. [Why two easels?]
2. The children sit on the mat as close as possible to the easels.
3. Don't rush through the book. Before you turn each page, refer to your list of questions, and ask children if they can answer any of them. Write in their answers:
In this activity you have entertained the children with a guessing game. You have also demonstrated that we read nonfiction differently from the way we read fiction. When we read nonfiction:
- We look for answers to our questions.
- We often write notes as we read.
- We get information from the pictures as well as the words.
You have introduced the children to three useful research strategies. They will go on using these strategies throughout their lives: whether they are studying at high school, planning a vacation, searching the net, or using a street map.
Children can also write their own puzzle book, modeled on Animal Clues. Each child writes one page (question + answer) for the book. This involves a simple research activity using photographs only. They can draw the clues or cut photographs out of old magazines.
Contents of Animal Clues
Lizards
Crabs
Grasshoppers
Sea stars (or starfish)
Frogs
Butterflies
Spiders
Other guessing books that also teach visual research skills include:
Do animals see the same world that we see? In this book, based on the familiar game of "I spy," children can discover the strange worlds that only animals can see.
Just outside your back door are some strange creatures with twelve eyes and sixteen legs. Come inside this book if you want to find out more about them.
All around us animals are hiding. They disguise themselves to look like bark or grass or sand or seaweed.
Roll over the book covers to see the first page of the books.
These books are now out of print
Second-hand copies can sometimes be bought from:
Copyright © Black Cockatoo Publishing PL 2006
