Clive Eats Alligators

By Alison Lester

This is a story of seven characters and all the things that make them unique!

It is such a thrill to listen to Alison read her book that she wrote 35 years ago! 

Follow the link and you will find the read aloud here:

Reading:

This book links strongly to the comprehension strategies of making connections and summarising.

Writing:

I have used this as a mentor text for generating and collecting ideas, conventions and publishing.

Mathematics:

This is a great book to explore different events and connections to the times of the day.

Alison’s read aloud has inspired the following teaching ideas that I would like to share with you!

o Draw images or write a description of your favourite character. (My favourite character is Frank!) Share your clues and see if your buddy can guess your favourite character.

o Create a T chart to compare two characters.

Ernie                                                                                                     Rosie

 Eats porridge for breakfast                                                             Likes bacon and eggs

o Create a word splash to represent a character in the book or an event such as breakfast, getting dressed or shopping. Use colour, size and shape to represent the meaning of the words.

o Match or label times of the day that would be reasonable for the events. What time would breakfast be?

o Create a mobile using words and images to recall one character in the story.

o Collect objects or images that appear in the story and sort by character.

o Play ‘character heads’ using the characters from the text.

o Go on a word treasure hunt! How many times the word – has- appeared in the book?

o Design, make and wear a tail like Tessa.

o On the front cover of the book Alison used a background of alligators to provide clues about Clive. Can you create a page about yourself? what would your background be?

o Photograph events in your day to create a book.

o Nicky likes to build. What can you build? What materials did you use? Sketch and label your building.

o Create a foldable book to describe a character or yourself!

o Select three characters and record the key ideas about each character on a grid.

o Cut up the grid and recall the story by classifying the terms according to the characters.

o Frank likes to play chess with his dog Rodger. What games do you like to play? Can you write instructions, make a video or draw a diagram to explain how to play your favourite game?

Enjoy and take care,