Using a science picture book to teach animal adaptations can bring nonfiction science to life for students. This post highlights What Do You Do With a Tail Like This? as an engaging mentor text and practical way to integrate reading, writing, and science in your classroom – plus, you’ll grab some freebies to use with it!
By now, you know I am PASSIONATE about integrating with mentor texts as much as possible! In this post, I will be sharing how to use a great book for reading and writing while teaching about animal adaptations or attributes. It’s called What Do You Do With a Tail Like This?
(See the book on Amazon with my affiliate link by tapping below! As an Amazon Associate I earn a few cents from qualifying purchases.)
What Do You Do With a Tail Like This? by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page is a fantastic book to use to expose students to animals they most likely have never seen in real life while also teaching animal adaptations.
It’s a great nonfiction book to use across K-5, but the activities I’m going to share with you in this post are perfect for grades 1 and 2.Â
As you read the book the first time, allow them to make a guess at the animal that belongs to the features shown on each page. When you turn the page, it shows the whole animal and describes why that feature is important for the animal. This would be a great opportunity to allow them to write down something new they learned about some of those attributes, or the animals.Â
Here is an example of the first page…
I have the students predict to what animal they think the nose belongs… they get VERY excited about figuring them out! This one is pretty easy actually, but later some of them get really tricky!! When we turn the page, they see if their prediction is correct, and then they learn why animals have different noses!
Here is the first freebie you can use right along with the book for animal adaptations!
The book goes through noses, ears, tails, eyes, feet, and mouths.
There are also SEVERAL animals in the book that have some similarities, as well as differences. Use this book to compare animals, not just with the text, but the pictures of the animals, too!
You will find a video below of me walking you through the book and the comparison activity. This was originally posted as a Facebook Live video, so ignore when I talk about links in the description. 🙂 You will find the “links” below this video instead!
You can get the activity shown in the video (plus a few more for reading and writing!) for this book FREE here from TPT!
And of course, while you are teaching about animals in first or second grade, you won’t want to miss the Animals Bundle that provides activities similar to the ones I’ve shared in this post, and also integrates grammar with those same fabulous nonfiction mentor texts in the reading and writing pack with mentor sentences!
You and your students are going to love them!
