Habitats by David Drew

Teaching ideas

This is a book about habitats but it is also one about diagrams. There are three sorts: cutaways, enlargements and block diagrams. These are the most popular visual texts among children because they "reveal secrets" about the world.

Reading the book

Show the cover and ask what is happening in the picture. The bird (a woodpecker) is flying home to its nest with a worm in its beak. The mole is burrowing in the ground.

Ask the children if they think this is a photograph. Is the scene a "real" one? You might start by asking, "Do you think that the mole's tunnel has really been cut open?" (No. This is a cutaway diagram. It shows things that are hidden in real life.) Explain that a diagram that "cuts open" something is called a cutaway diagram.

The forest (pages 2-3)

There are three scenes in the book. The first is a forest in Europe. We have seen part of this diagram already, on the cover.

Number key. Children can name the animals. Show them that next to each animal is a number. The bird has the number 1 next to it. Ask, "Where else is the number 1?" The children point to the number key on the left of the diagram. "Right. This tells us the name of the bird. It's a woodpecker."

Cutaway diagrams. Once you have named all the animals, remind the children that this is a diagram that shows us secret things in a forest. Can they find something that is normally hidden? The children might point to the mole's tunnel, or the woodpecker chicks inside the tree, or the squirrel's young inside its nest (called a drey).

Block diagram. A block diagram is like a slice removed from a cake. In this case, the illustrator has removed a "slice" from the forest. This lets us see the mole's burrow. Another block diagram on this page shows us the tunnels made by a beetle. These tunnels are normally hidden under the bark of this oak tree. This is another "secret" that we can reveal by using a diagram.

Enlargement diagram. The third sort of diagram makes a detail bigger so that we can see it more clearly. It is called an enlargement diagram. Ask the children to find the beetle using the number key again. Notice that there is a blue arrow next to the beetle. This arrow shows us that the detail (inside a circle like a magnifying lens) is an enlargement of the tiny insect, which you can hardly see, at the other end of the arrow.

The desert (pages 4-5) and the rainforest (pages 6-7)

Continue in the same way with the rest of the book. In each scene you will find four animals in their natural habitat.

Where in the world are they?

When you reach the end of the book you will see a map (page 8). This shows us that the forest is in Europe, the desert is in Mexico, and the rainforest is in Australia. Again, a number key helps children to find the places on a world map.

What next?

Help children to see the similarities and differences between two of these habitats by drawing up a table like this one:

	Desert	Temperate forest
animals	owl, lizard, ant lion, fox	woodpecker, squirrel, beetle, mole
plants	cacti	oaks, grasses, fungi
Has trees?	no	yes
Has insects?	yes	yes
Has rocks?	yes	yes
location	south-west USA and Mexico	Europe

By reading across the table we can quickly find the differences between the two habitats.

Help children find the similarities by marking them in the same color. In this table similarities have been marked in green.

Children can use the table to make statements such as

Forests have oak trees but deserts have cacti.
Both deserts and temperate forests have insects.

This might lead to writing a short information report, "How Are Deserts Different From Forests?"

Comparisons can also be made with a Venn diagram. In this kind of diagram the similarities are found where the loops overlap:

Everything in the orange loop belongs to the desert. Everything in the green loop belongs to the temperate forest. Where the loops overlap, the items belong to both loops.

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