Here are some text-specific ideas for using this fantastic nature storybook. Scroll further down for cross-curricular suggestions.
- Look at the cover. Why does the book have the title 'Tigress? Why might the author have chosen to focus on the female rather than the male?
- Look at the endpapers. The Paisley design was chosen to represent India, one of the places where tigers live.
- Note the hot colours the illustrator has used on the first spread (p6-7) echoing the heat of the tigress's environment.
- Notice the two types of text - the main one, in a poetic style that tells the story, and the more straightforward language of the sub-text with gives extra information.
- On pages 6-7 find allusions to the tigress being magical, and link this to camouflage.
- Also on pages 6-7, find the first examples of alliteration - tree,tail; stalks, slowly; and assonance - tigress, hiding; fiery, stripy. There are many more to be found throughout the text.
- On pages 8/9 there are five sentences. Notice how they all start differently and there are no unnecessary words, showing deliberate and careful word choices that ensure an efficiency of language.
- Find the simile on page 10 - 'body like wind on water' - and find others elsewhere in the book.
- On page 14 look at the three spellings and meanings of the words two/too/to.
- List the powerful verbs e.g.: crouches, gleam, ripple, wriggling, snarl, bared, sheathed, crunched, wrinkling, quiver, gliding, nuzzles. Remember that the test of whether a word is a verb is that its tense can be changed.
Cross-curricular links
- Make a time-line of tiger cubs' development
- Create tiger stripe designs in paint or collage
- Write a poem based on tigers. Include their movement, description, sounds, size, hunting etc.
- Map where tigers live
- Find and measure out the size of an adult tiger - nose to tail-tip
- Create a tiger fact-file, using this book and the internet for information
- Make a poster about protecting wild tigers
- Compose some tigery music to accompany the reading of the book
- Create a dance sequence based on the powerful verbs found in the text
- Have a debate about whether wild animals like tigers should be kept in zoos. What are the pros and cons?
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