51ºÚÁÏ

This engaging and thought-provoking double lesson is designed to accompany class reading of the poem 'There’s a Rang-tan in My Bedroom.’ By the end of the double lesson, children develop a secure understanding of the key meanings of the poem and enhanced contextual knowledge about the plight of orangutans in south-east Asia.

The comprehensive and colourful PowerPoint presentation enables students to understand the text through:
-Making predictions;
-Understanding the key features of context;
-Retrieving key information and inferring hidden meanings.

The lesson includes key contextual information about orangutans and their habitat, plus their critically endangered status and reasons why. A research template is also provided (in both Word and PDF) to support a task which allows them to develop further contextual understanding.
A link is provided to a video animation of the poem being read aloud, to support the children’s reading of the poem. Once they are familiar with the poem, the lesson includes a range of retrieval, vocabulary, inference and deeper discussion activites.
For the main creative activity, children produce a persuasive poster encouraging others to act, in line with the main messages of the poem. Helpful examples of persuasive devices, in addition to a ‘Writing to Persuade’ helpsheet (in Word and PDF) are also provided.

There is a lot of content here (the PowerPoint presentation is 22 slides long, in addition to templates/helpsheets), so I would suggest perhaps breaking this up over two or even three lessons. The resources are most suitable for students in lower KS2 (I originally used these resources with a year 3 class), but may be adapted for other age groups, depending upon the individual context of the school and students.