Spiders get a bad press and are often used as triggers for fear so here’s a slightly different but very simple approach to our eight legged “friends” using a non-fiction text.
Spiders get a bad press and are often used as triggers for fear so here’s a slightly different but very simple approach to our eight legged “friends” using a non-fiction text.
The article tells of a spider named Kim who has been trained to jump (behaviour, green cog) on demand, a signal given by scientists, (trigger, yellow cog). This could be left as a 2 cog link between trigger and behaviour.
However, body sensations (red/pink cogs) can also be added. Using the image and the children’s own experiences of big jumps, body sensations of light, flying, fluttery tummy, hairs on end, could be used.
The vocabulary can then be written in coloured cogs and displayed as in the main image.
(To use this lesson at developing vocabulary level, where the cog concepts are used only as a planning tool to guide the adult’s conversation and word choice. Words could be written in cog colours or visual prompts used to retell the story.)
If using this article with older pupils, Primary 6 or 7, the grey intensity cog can be added to describe the size of the jump: 6 times its body length or 4 times that of a human jump.
