Animals, animal care, farming & equine

This is a short reading adapted from an online news report. It includes a short vocabulary exercise – matching words and phrases with the same meaning, an ordering question, and some comprehension questions for discussion. Answer sheet included.

Editor’s note: fully mapped to E2 Functional English

A writing task / practice paper written for an E3 booster writing group of 16-18 year olds.

You want a Saturday job in a pet shop and write a letter to the manager about possible vacancies.

Practice for E2 exams with a pet theme. Reading comprehension, alphabetical order, writing and discussion are all covered.

Two fun punctuation exercises for cat lovers.
Both are quite challenging. The first page requires full stops, capital letters and commas (E3-L1) whereas the second also includes quotation marks and apostrophes (L1-L2).

[img_assist|nid=4821|title=|desc=|link=popup|align=left|width=68|height=100]Two resources that can be used together or independently.

• An ICC / Literacy / Functional English / ESOL research project task sheet on “My favourite British animal”. E3-L2 reading, writing and ICT
• A basic animal anatomy vocabulary sheet for E2-E3 ESOL (paw, claw, antler, etc.)

For more of Kathy’s animal resources go to ‘see also’ below. (Birds of Prey resources)

Embedded literacy and Functional English for animal lovers! Also ideal for ESOL.
A beautiful set of three resources.

• Birds of prey technical vocabulary PPT (with link to a video) L1-L2
• Birds of prey gap fill (subject-verb agreement) E3-L1
• British Birds of prey reading comprehension L2 (also great for ESOL leaerners who will also learn some geography about the major British hill areas)

For more of Kathy’s British animal resources go to ‘see also’ below.

[img_assist|nid=4771|title=|desc=|link=popup|align=left|width=100|height=69]Another great set of three comprehension resources from Australia. Each with a related, differentiated crossword puzzle. All based on the same Australian news article about the danger of swooping magpies.
The Satellite (Australia) September 13 2010
http://www.thesatellite.com.au/story/2010/09/13/steer-clear-of-swooping…

Lovely E2 reading comprehension based on a short news article about a new turtle sanctuary at Weymouth Sea Life Park. Questions cover purpose and layout of text, general comprehension and vocabulary.

This Blue Cross resource was written for strong E3 or L1 (or even L2) ESOL learners. I first used it as a homework exercise. The English on the site is a little quirky but it is an exercise using authentic material which always has its upsides and downsides.

However, it is good on human interests and most people like animals. It involves ICT, Reading and Writing. It’s best to pre-teach the vocabulary.

Also ideal for, and fully mapped to, Functional Skills English Level 1 reading and writng.

Cats exploit humans by purring is a comprehension activity based on a BBC 2009 news report. Comprehension questions, vocabulary/synonyms and a writing task.