Unusual Animals Reading

About this Series This series began as a way to inspire more science content based reading for my A2/A2+ readers. I wanted to have more authentic text readings about a topic of interests, and animals were always a winner. These worksheets are based on authentic readings from news reports and stories about these unique animals.

To develop deeper reading skills for my A2/A2+ learners, I wanted to think about a different way to present the traditional reading worksheet. You will find that after an initial gist question, all the worksheets contain a graphic organizer. The graphic organizer follows common comprehension questions, and will help students move from surface reading, to reading for deeper details, and inference. This develops critical thinking skills and reading skills for any students.

For English Language learners, the use of the graphic organizers instead of traditional questions provides two (2) unique benefits

More communication - students will need to discuss and interact with each other to interpret and understand what information could work best in each graphic organizer, fostering interactive communication for problem solving
Critical thinking - students will have to think more carefully about what information is relevant, and how to best record information, this helps students reframe information, providing greater opportunities to rephrase and summarize information in their own words

A key need for progression from A2+ to B1 is richer, more complex reading and discussions, and I think you will find these worksheets provide the needed challenge to help your students make new progress.

Lesson Plan Start here, download this file. A Lesson Plan Unusual Animals.pdf

This is a companion lesson plan that can be used with all the worksheets in this series.
This plan provides the step by step instructions to teach these reading worksheets in any classroom.
You can modify the level of difficulty by choosing and tailoring specific options for completing the worksheets.
As you become comfortable, feel free to expand and create your own version of this lesson plan.